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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf.. K.3i. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES 



RAILWAY 



STORIES OF THE LOCOMOTIVE IN EVERY LAND 



WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY 

AUTHOR or "JOHN GREENLBAF WHITTIER : HIS LIFE, GENIUS, AND 
WRITINGS," ETC. 










CHICAGO 

S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 
1884 



'iA 



COPTEIGHT, 1884, 

By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 




I KHIGHT & LEONARD . ( 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 



ALTHOUGH, in the preparation of the following work 
I have drawn upon the entire literature of the rail- 
way during the half-century of its existence, and am there- 
fore under obligation for materials to innumerable books, 
magazines, and newspapers, I must 3^et acknowledge espe- 
cial indebtedness to the "Railway Age," of Chicago; to 
files of the London " Times," and certain early American 
newspapers kindly placed at my disposal by the librarian 
of the Boston Athenaeum, Mr. Charles A. Cutter; and to 
Mr. William H. Brown's " History of the First Locomotives 
in America." Mr. Brown's book is standard authority on 
the subject of early American railroads, although it has 
been for some time out of print, and is unfitted for the 
general reader by reason of its technical details. The 
chapter on " The Vertical Railway," in the present volume, 
was originally contributed by me to "Harper's Monthly 
Magazine"; and for permission to use it here, with the 
accompanying illustrations, I am indebted to the courtesy 
of Messrs. Harper & Brothers. Special thanks are ren- 
dered to Mr. E. H. Talbott, editor of the " Railway Age," 



IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 

for the engraving of the G-eorge Stephenson passenger-car, 
that of the old Michigan Central railroad car, the car " Vic- 
tory," Interior of " Eailway Age " car, and several others. 
Messrs. Hoopes and Townsend, of Philadelphia, have 
placed in my hands for use the quaint picture of " Old Iron- 
sides," with his 

"Train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following"; 

and Messrs. H. K. Porter and Company, of Pittsburgh, have 
kindly furnished an electrotype of their logging train. Mr. 
Thomas A. Edison and the Leo Daft Electric Light Company 
have furnished views of their electric locomotives. To the 
" Scientific American " I am indebted for the use of sev- 
eral cuts; also to Mr. John Stevenson for permission to 
reproduce the engraving of his first street car. The train 
of cars figured on page thirteen is a reduced fac-simile of 
the large folded picture that forms the frontispiece to the 
original edition of Thomas Gray's work on the railway 
(London: 1823). The picture is, of course, an ideal one, for 
when it was made the railway was not in existence. 

W. S. K. 



COI^TE^TS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Introduction 1-6 

Sidney Smith and the Solan Goose, 1. The Womb of the 
Dragon, 2. Balaklava-eharge of the Locomotive, 3. 
Poetry of the Train, 3. Anecdote of the Ameer of Afghan- 
istan, 3. The Railroad a Good Democrat, 3. The Feats of 
Steam, 3. From Cologne to London, 4. 

CHAPTER IL 

Beginnings in Europe ........ 6-30 

"Grasshopper Engines," 6. The Cornish Monster and the 
Clergyman, 6. " Na-noth-nothing to pay, my de-dear Mr. 
Devil!" 7. Road-engines with Legs, 8. "Owd Neddy's 
Quaker Line " (the Stockton and Darlington), 8. First Rail- 
road Passenger Car in the World, 9. First Steam Passenger 
Car (George Stephenson's), 10. The "Puffing Billy" and 
the Burning-glass, 12. Quaint Early Signals, 12. The 
Darlington Jubilee of 1875, 13. The Railroad Train of 
Thomas Gray, 14. Snapped Legs and Bursting Hearts, 15. 
A Thrill of Annihilation ! 16. Downfall of the Bonifaces, 
16, Eating a Stewed Engine-wheel, 16. George Stephen- 
son before the Parliamentary Committee, — Roars of In- 
credulous Laughter, 17. Stephenson's Victory at Rainhill, 
18. Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, — 



VI CON"TEIirTS. 

The First Railway Accident, 18. Fanny Kemble's Loco- 
motive Ride with Old Northumbrian George, 19 (note). 
The First French Railway, — " Triomphe merveilleuse ! " 
" Plaisir inconnu /" 20. A G-routy Englishman, 21. Old 
Samuel Breck of the Corps of Silver Grays, 23. Railway 
. Mania of 1836, 23. " Wily, Slily, Gammon and Bubble! " 
24. Railway Mania of 1844, 24. Spinsters and Scrip, 25. 
Speculations of a Fascinating Marchioness, 26. The Debate 
of the Crack Engineers, 28. Railway Magnate Hudson and 
his "Umbrageous Scrip," 28, 

CHAPTER III. 

The Fiest American Railroads . _ _ . . 30-68 
Oliver Evans's Steam-wagon on Wheels, 30. His Remark- 
able Prophecy, 30. Dr. Darwin's Fiery Chariot, 31. Mother 
Shipton a Myth, 31. Colonel John Stevens's Railway on 
Posts, 32. Old "Granite Railroad" of Quincy (first in 
America), 33. First Snow-plough, 34. First Revolution on 
: American Soil of the Driving-wheel of a Locomotive, 86. 
Peter Cooper, the "Father of the Locomotive System in 
America," 39. Peter Cooper building his Engine, the 
"Tom Thumb," 39. Baron Krudener and the Sailing-car, 
39. The " Cowed" ■ FAitors, 39. Race of the "Tom 
Thumb " and the " Gallant Gray," 44. The " Flying Dutch- 
man," 46. A Negro Fireman sits on the Safety-valve of 
the "Best Friend," with Unpleasant Results, 46. Silhouette- 
artist Brown snips out a Quaint Picture of the First Rail- 
road Train in the North, 47. Thundering along toward 
Schenectady, 48. Wood-sparks, Burnt Umbrellas, and Merry- 
woful Deck-pass'?ngers, 50. Stampede along the Road, 51. 
Ludicrous Trial- trip of " Old Ironsides," 52. Old Car, 
"Victory," 54. A Novel Track-illuminator, 54. Pounding 
down "Snake-heads," 56. Old Custom of Registering Names 



CONTEISTTS. Vll 

of Railway Passengers, 56. The Early Railroads of Massa- 
chusetts, 57. Edward Everett Hale's First Locomotive Ride, 
57 (note). Thick-headed Legislators, 59. Boston and Wor- 
cester Railroad, 59. First Locomotive-whistle in Ohio, 62. 
The Lexington and Frankfort Railroad in Kentucky, 63. 
Its Queer Little Locomotive with Iliekory Brooms in Front, 
63. First PufE of a Locomotive on the Prairies, 65. 
Charge of a Bull upon the Engine, 66. General Semples 
and his Prairie-locomotive, 66. View of Old Car on the 
Michigan Central, 67. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Banding of the Continent . _ . - - 68-90 

Trunk Lines, 68. Colossal Statue of Columbus, hewn out 
of the Rocky Mountains, 68 (note). "The Strong, Light 
Works of Modern Engineers," 69. Longest Railroad in 
the World, 69 (note). First Railroad out of Chicago, 70. 
Union Pacific, — The Spinning of the Iron Thread, The 
Steady Tramp across the Plains, The Last Spike, 70. Cen- 
tral Pacific, — The Battle with the Sierras, 71. An AA^alanche 
of Earth, 72. Southern Pacific, — Tank-cars, Red Apaches, 
Sand-storms, 73. The Mexican Central, — " Viva la Repub- 
lica de Mexico ! " 73. The Denver and Rio Grande Railway, 
the Iron Poem of the West, 74. Railway Exposition at Chi- 
cago, — Old Curiosity Shop, Electric Railway, 75. Night- 
battle with the Indians on the Union Pacific, 78. Anecdote 
of the Tenderfoot Engineer, 79. Trains running the Fire- 
gauntlet, 80. Waterspouts on the Plains, — Lost Train, 
Buried Locomotive, 80. A Wonderful Hail-storm, 80. 
Snow-ploughs, — Charge of the Harnessed Engines, 82. 
Trains lost in Snow-storms, 83. . The New Time-standard, 
87. 



Vlii CONTEIS'TS. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Locomotive iisr Slippeks 90-101 

The Three-elephant Team in Ceylon, 90. "Change Cars 
for Nazareth ! " 90. The Steam Wagon in the Land of Roses, 
90. The Locomotive in the Sunrise Land, — the Mikado open- 
ing the First Railroad in Japan, 91. How the " Japs " take 
to Steam Travel, 92. The First and Only Railroad in China, 

— Disturbing the Spirits of the Earth and Air, 93. India, — 
Attack of an Elephant upon a Locomotive ; A Military Cor- 
don of Stations; Feathery-foliaged Telegraph-poles ; Novel 
Sleeping Cars; The Chota-hazare; The Railroad a Caste- 
destroyer; Uproar of the Natives at a Station ; The "Fra- 
grance of a Monkey-house " ; Scarlet Turbans and Grinning 
Teeth, 94. Africa, — Balconied Cars; Tipped into the Nile; 
Prayer-carpets ; The Imperturbable Old Turk ; The Mish- 
misli, 98. 

CHAPTER VI. 

A Mosaic of Teavel . 101-114 

Russia,-^ Sumptuous Two-story Saloon-Cars; Clean, Bright 
Restaurants, 101. Travel in Norway, 102. Sweden, — The 
Arcadia of Travellers by Rail; Paul du Chaillu and his 
Wonderful Dinner, 103. Germany, — No Broken Rails ; The 
Conductor in his Little Watch-tower ; FiveHours and Fifteen 
Beers from Cologne to Mainz ; The Jolly Buffets, 104. Spain, 

— Take your Time ; ' ' Quien quiere Agua? " Fruit Vendors, 
106. France, — The Missis of Mugby Junction relates her 
Travels, "The Universal French Refreshment Sangwich 
busts on your Disgusted Vision"; Train-lunches, 107. 
England, — Shadowing a Thief in Woman's Apparel*; 
Features of English Cai's ; Description of the Underground 
Railways of London, Gigantic Subterranean and Subfluvial 
Tunnels, Weird Gliding of the Noiseless Trains, 111. 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER VII. 

A Handful of Curiosities 114-125 

A Locomotive on Sled-runners, 114. Railroads on the Ice, 
115. A Railroad in the Tree-tops, 115, The Old Fremont 
and Maumee Road, 115. Wooden Railways, 116. Bicycle 
Railways, — The Steam Caravan at Aleppo; A Two-wheeled 
Locomotive in New Jersey, 118. Toy Railroads, 118. A 
Submarine Railway, 119. The Marine Railway of Captain 
James B. Eads, — Transfer of Ocean Vessels aei-oss the Isth- 
mus of Tehuantepec by Rail, 119. Atmospheric Railways 
(Compressed Air the Motive-power), 120. A Flying Loco- 
motive, 121. Cars Propelled by Sails, 121. A Travelling 
Telegraph-office, 122. The Dynograph-car, 124. 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Mountain- Eailwats 125-145 

The Locomotive a Good Climber, 125. The Gravity Road 
of Honesdale, — Magically Propelled Cars, 125. Old Switch- 
back Road, 126. Old Portage Railroad aci'oss the Alleghany 
Mountains, — "One of the Wonders of the World," 127. All 
Aboard for Pittsburgh via Horse-car, Canal, and Inclined 
Plane! 128. Old Mountain-top Track of Virginia, 129. 
The Mt. Washington Railroad, 129. The Rigi Roads,— Up 
the Swiss Mountains by Rail, 130. The Mount Desert 
Railway, — bolted to the Solid Ledge, 131. Up Mt. Vesuvius 
by Steam-power, — Appalling Steepness of the Track, Cisterns 
dug in the Solid Lava, Road insured against the Volcano ! 
132. The Magnificent Tunnels, Viaducts, and Snow-sheds 
of the Alpine Railroads, — Whirling through Mountains in 
Corkscrew Fashion, — Cattle as Small as Ants on a Table- 
cloth,— St. Gothard and Mt. Cenis Tunnels, 134. The Hoo- 



X CONTENTS. 

sac Tunnel, — History of its Construction, Its Cost, Terrible 
Accident in the Central Shaft, Five Miles of Solemn Gloom, 
Torpedo Signals, 138. The "Wonder of the Andes Mount- 
ains, — A Railroad among the Clouds in the Empire of the 
Ineas, The Highest Track on the Globe ; Gorge of Los In- 
fernillos, Tuflel de la Cima ; Thrilling Descent in a Hand- 
car, 141. 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Vertical Eailway -_-.-._ 145-158 

The First Freight Elevators in the World, 146. The Seven 
Boxes of Sugar and the Air-cushion of Albert Betteley, 147. 
Otis Tuft's "Vertical Screw Railway" in the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel, 148. Great Curiosity of Visitors, 149. The Huge 
Spiral Shaft and its Wheels, — The Brakes and the Fluid-- 
retarder, 149. The First Rope Elevator, 151, Hydraulic 
Elevators, — Soaring of the Wingless Bird in Paris, 152. The 
Old Spy-glass Elevators of the New York Post-office, 153. 
Accidents, — Decapitation of a Negro, etc., 154. The Serio- 
comic Air-cushion Experiment at the Parker House, Bos- 
ton, 155. Air-cushion P'eats at Chicago Exposition of 1880, 
156. The Architectural Grandeur of recent City Buildings 
due to the Vertical Railway, 15G. 

CHAPTER X. 

The Lightning Haknessed — Tramways _ . _ 158-178 
Electricity, the Coming Motor and the Benefactor of the 
Poor, 158. Around the World in a Train of Flying-cars, 
159. Tissandier's Electric Air-car, Paris, 1883, 159. Prof. 
Werner Siemens, the Father of the Electric Railway Sys- 
tem, 159. The First Electric Locomotive in America, 159. 
The Berlin Roads, — A Horse strikes Lightning with his 
Shoe, 160. Runaway Car in Paris, — Hop, Snap, Flash ! 161. 



CONTENTS. XI 

The Splendid Old Genie at Work in the Mines of Saxony, 
161. By Lightning to the Giant's Causeway, 163. Edison's 
Enchantments at Menlo Park, — His Electric Locomo- 
tive, 162. Leo Daft's Electric Locomotive, the Ampere, on 
the Saratoga, Mt. McGregor and Lake George Railroad, 165. 
The Low-tension Current entirely Safe, 165. Pull of the 
Electro-magnets, 165. Electric Railways in London, 166. 
In the United States, 168. The First Street Car, 169. Old 
Harlem Line in New York, 169. "Whoa!" Crash! 171. 
The Cambridge Horse Railroad of Massachusetts, 172. 
L' Americain, 172. George Francis Train and his Grand 
Street-railway Banquet in Liverpool, 172. The Trumpet- 
ers of Buenos Ayres, 173. The Cable Railroads, 173. The 
Elevated Railways of New York, 174. Brick Viaducts of 
London, 174. Grease Splashes, Burnt Coats, and Rapid 
Transit, 176. Quaint Report of the Massachusetts Legisla- 
tors in 1827 on a Bicycle Railway with "Sidelings," 176. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Functions of the Railway in War . _ 178-189 
Railways, the Delicate Nerve System of a Country, 178. The 
Great Railroad Riots of 1877, 178. The Railway a Preca- 
rious Reliance when within Reach of the Enejuy, 179. A 
Lapteal Tube for Sherman's Army in its March to the Sea, 
■ 180. The Strade Ferrate in Italian Wars, 180. The Hos- 
pital-trains of Germany, 181. Our Sanitary Commission's 
Railway Ambulances, ]81. The Military Railway Or- 
ganization of the German Army, 182. The Lack of such 
an Organization in France, 182. The Practice-railway of 
the German Corps, 183. General Sherman again, — The Con- 
struction Corps during his Atlanta Campaign, — Whistle of 
the Yankee Locomotive, 184. Story of the Capture of a 
Locomotive by Twenty-two Picked Soldiers, — Their Wild 



Xll CONTENTS. 

Railway Dash, Capture, and Subsequent Adventures, 185. 
An Armored Railway Train in Egypt, 188. 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Luxuries of Travel 189-199 

Mr. Breck and his Little Jeremiad, 189. The Travelling 
Coach of Napoleon I, 189. Contrasted with the Imperial 
Suite of Railway Coaches employed by Napoleon HI and 
the Empress Eugenie, 190. The Travelling of the Queen 
of Sheba and Queen Victoria, — The Royal Night Train from 
Windsor to Balmoral, 191. Senator Sharon orders out his 
Wagon for a Drive over the Continent, 191. Vanderbilt's 
Flying Palace, — A Hundred Miles in a Hundred Minutes, 
192. The "Railway Age" Car a Marvel of Beauty, 193. 
Invention of Sleeping and Palace Cars by Woodruff, Wag- 
ner, and Pullman, 193. The Mann Boudoir Cars, 195. 
Smoking Cars, — Adventure with Two Feminine Meer- 
schaums, 186. Speed, — The Fastest Trains of Europe and 
America, 196. A Train stopped by Mushrooms, 198. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Locomotive and its Master _ . . . 199-^12 

" Staym-ingynes, that Stand in Lines," 199. "Grip and 
Go," the Requisites of a Good Locomotive, 199. Camel- 
backs and Moguls, 199. English and American Engines 
Compared, 199. The Crimson Plume of the Locomotive Fun- 
nel, 200. A Cunning old Hawk flying in the Smoke, 200. 
jr Appetite of the Fire-steed, — Dishes he Eats, 201. Groom- 
ing the Locomotive and Oiling up his Joints, 201. The Mid- 
night Ride of an Engine-Cleaner, 202. Asleep on a Locomo- 
tive, 203. Trials of Locomotive Engineers, 203. Heroic 
Death of Engineer Joseph A. Seeds, 204. Railway Yarns 



CONTENTS. Xin 

« 
of the West, 205. Chased by a Locomotive, 206. A Lo- 
comotive's Tour through a Depot, 207. Fight for an 
Engine by the Seaside, — A Merry Tug of War, Steam 
versus Mules and Men, 208. 

CHAPTER XIV. • 

The Teack 212-225 

The Making of a Steel Rail, 212. Gauges, Broad and Nar- 
row, 213. A Railroad Ten Inches Wide in Massachiisetts, 
214. Stations, or Depots, — American Barracks versus Italian 
Frescoes and Orange Trees; Fountains, Flowers, Damask 
Curtains, and Oil Paintings in European Stations, 214. 
Something about Railroad Signals, 216. The First Tele- 
graphic Signalling (on the Erie Road), 217. An Accident 
in 1841, 218. The Train-despatcher in his Den, 218. 
The Block System, 220. Automatic Electric Signals, 
220. The Old Train StafE and Ticket System in Great 
Britain, 221. The Signal and Interlocking Towers and 
Cabins of London, one of the Wonders of the World, 221. 
Sixteen Hundred Trains a Day at Clapham Junction, 223. 
London enmeshed with Labyrinthine Curves, 224. 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Train 225-244 

The Manufacture of a Car-wheel, — The Silver-diamond Fila- 
ments of the ' ' Tread" ; Swinging the Hot Wheels into the 
Annealing-pits, 225. Paper Wheels, 226. The Miller Coup- 
ler, Buffer, and Platform, 226. Description of the West- 
inghouse Brake, 227. The Baby Elephant and the Air-brake 
Rope, 228. Invention of the Conductor's; Bell-rope, 228. 
Electric Signal-bells on Cars, 229. Lighting Cars in Eu- 
rope, — Edison's Incandescent Lamps, and Phosphorescent 



XIV CONTENTS. 

Paint, 330. The Eastman Non-freezing Car, 230. History 
and Description of the English and American Postal-ear Sys- 
tems, 231. Story of the Expressrcar Business, 232. Rail- 
road Tickets, — their Invention in England, Description of 
the Delicate and Curious Machinery used in Printing them, 
First Use in America; Coupon Tickets, first used on 
the Baltimore and Ohio Road; The Cheap Excursion 
Ticket, 233. About Conductors, — Fight of a Man with a 
Railroad, 237. Embezzlements and Spotters, 238. Petty 
Thieving by Railway Employes in Eui'ope, — Appropriating 
Wine and Fat Dairy Cheeses, 239. Dare-Devil Train Rob- 
bery, 239. "In as Nice a Little Trap as ever I saw," 241. 
Heigho! a Man inside a Box, 242. Train Robbery in Mis- 
souri, 242. Conclusion, — Shortcomings of the Railroad; 
Its Future, 243. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



" The Experiment " 9 

George Stephenson's Passenger Car ..... 11 
Thomas Gray's Idea of a Railroad Train ■ . . . 13 
First American Railway (The Granite Road) . . 34 

The " Stourbridge Lion " 37 

Peter Cooper's Locomotive 40 

The " Best Friend " .45 

The " De Witt Clinton " and Coaches .... 49 
First Railroad Train in Pennsylvania .... 53 

The ." Victory " 55 

Old Railway Time-table 60 

Michigan Central Railroad Car, 1848 .... 67 

The "Arabian" , 76 

A Locomotive on Sled Runners 114 

Logging Railway Train 117 

Sailing Car (Kansas Pacific Railway) .... 123 

Mount Vesuvius Railway Car 133 

Waterman's Elevator 147 

The First Passenger Elevator 149 

Edison's Electric Locomotive 163 

The Daft Electric Locomotive . 167 

The First Street Car in the World .... 169 

Armored Railway Train 187 

Interior of the " Railway Age " Car .... 193 

XV 



Brakes were hugged about the wheels, 
All the cranks a stillness kept, 
Shadows on the polish slept. 
And the demon under seals 
Quiet lulled the murmuring ire 
Of our iron heart of fire, 
Till we chafed it into toil, 
Gave it blast and gave it oil. 
Now we nurse a mad delight. 

Dash the iron leagues behind, 
Horse a wrath and drink a wind, 
Run outrageous through the night. 
***** 
Water boil and Are burn 
In the oily steaming urn; 
Let the fire and water waste. 

They that tarry wind and tide, 
Safely to the harbor ride ; 
Ruin cracks the skull of Haste. 
Best though life may be in action. 

Action is not all in all; 
Till the track is clear for traction 

Stand we, though the heavens fall ; 
Stand we still and steady, though 
From the valve the vapor blow. 
From the fire the fuel go. 
Who shall dare to antedate 
By a step the step of Fate? 

—E. W. Ellsworth. 
xvi 



WO^DEES A]^D OUEIOSITIES OF 
THE KAIL WAY. 



CHAPTEEI. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Man is become a bird ; be can fly longer and quiclier than a Solan goose. 
The mamma rushes sixty miles in two hours, to the aching finger of her con- 
jugating and declining grammar-boy. The early Scotchman scratches him- 
self in the morning mists of the North, and has porridge in Piccadilly, before 
the setting sun. The Puseyite priest, after a rush of one hundred miles, ap- 
pears with his little volume of nonsense at the breakfast of his bookseller. 
Everything is near, everything is immediate.— Sydney Smith. 

THE huge, ample-shadowed foundry; the peculiar fra- 
grance of burnt earth and iron; the straight sun- 
ribbons slanting down from the lantern through the 
dim-blue smoke ; nimbus-rays of gold-colored light bursting 
out of the blast-furnaces; men passing rapidly to and fro 
with encrusted ladles of glittering liquor, out of which 
beauteous gold-sparkles leap upward in many a sprangle 
and drooping curve; cool earth-moulds licked by tongues 
of purple fire ; the sullen trip-hammer battering the massy 
cakes of wax- like metal, the changing colors as it cools — 
pale lemon, gold, red, black; the jet of water applied; the 
boy controlling the huge steam-hammer that can crack a 
walnut or shatter a cannon-ball; the deafening clamor of 
the constructing and finishing room, the hard ring of the 
resonant iron, the steel ribs, artery-tubes, " the black cylin- 



2 WOlfDEES AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

dric body, golden brass and silvery steel," and, finally, the 
great crane that lifts up the monster in chains, and carries 
it to the doorway, and sets it down in all the resplendence 
of its polish and paint, ready to begin its thirty years of 
toil. This is the building of the locomotive; out of this 
foundry-womb is born our strong beast of burden, the 
dusky demon who trundles our errands, on the plains the 
rival of the bison, in the desert outtiring the camel, among 
the mountains as sure-footed as the llama, 

"Type of the modern, emblem of motion and power," 

perpetuator of democracies, mingler of thoughts and hearts, 
giver of bread, peacemaker, pet and pride of commerce, 
patient drudge and bitted dragon of the world. 

To four things may the rush of a fast express-train be 
likened — a hurricane, a prairie fire, the thunder-trample of 
a herd of wild animals, and the battle- charge of a regiment 
of cavalry. Hugo gives you the feeling in the storms of his 
"Toilers of the Sea," and in the charge of the cuirassiers in 
"Les Mis^rables." The locomotive has turned our coach- 
men into heroes — one gain at least; the exchange of 
leather ribbons for steel has made out of beer-soaken 
Tony Weller a brave cajotain; and if the man in blue 
overalls and black cap is not so jolly and communicative as 
his predecessor in corduroys and gloves, he is at least sober, 
faithful and intelligent. 

The thrill of wonder that we feel at the sight of the loco- 
motive is partly caused by the circumstance that in it we 
behold power utilized by a piece of mechanism to transport 
itself through space, and we generally associate self-locomo- 
tion with animal life. ■ That there is a fierce and manly 
poetry in the make-up and performances of a locomotive 
nearly everybody feels, though not knowing exactly how to 



INTRODUCTIOlSr. 6 

express the thought. " It is better than a page of the 
Iliad," says one. " A Balaklava-charge every day," says 
another. And our old Homeric poet, Whitman, has caught 
the inspiration of it in his " Locomotive in Winter." 
There is poetry in the hum of an approaching train; in the 
twisted and braided transparency of the heat as it leaves 
the locomotive funnel; in the iliacal convolutions and 
drifted sable of the smoke, and the delicate flushings of the 
snowy steam as it floats for a moment in wayward indo- 
lence behind the train. 

But the word " power " expresses more accurately than 
"beauty" the spirit of the railroad. When Sheer Ali, 
Ameer of Afghanistan, was taking his first railway journey, 
and had carefully examined the locomotive, the cars, and 
the workshops of the line, — " No longer," said he, " can we 
talk of Aristotle and Diogenes." The Ameer evidently had 
an inkling of the enormous dynamic possibilities of such an 
institution as the railroad. But what he would have said 
if he had stood for an hour at one of the great railway 
centres of London, and what thoughts he would have enter- 
tained in view of the tunnels of the Alps and the Andes, or 
the astounding railway performances of the United States 
(in 1882 eleven thousand five hundred and ninety-one miles 
of track were laid in this country), it is impossible to say. 

Just what is to be the worth of the railroad as a civiliz- 
ing factoi', it is perhaps too soon to determine. It is quite 
possible that rapid locomotion may not in any way assist in 
deepening the humanitarian culture of select coteries of 
antiquarians and artists, but it is a strong force for the 
uplifting of the people. The railroad is a good democrat, a 
great leveller, and that is one reason why old-fashioned 
sesthetes, like Euskin, hate it so much. How it intensifies 



4 WONDEKS A]SrD CUKIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

all the activities of society,- cuts in two the barriers of 
sectional and national exclusiveness, weakens caste (notably 
in India), diffuses the sunshine of intelligence, carries the 
chopper to the tree, the miner to the mine, the ploughman 
to the prairie; humbles the haughtiness of the seaport city 
by placing that of the interior on about the same intel- 
lectual level ; stretches out the great municipalities into vast 
areas of rural suburbs;* carries along its wealthy arteries 
the golden grain that feeds the world; transports our mes- 
sage a thousand miles and receives a penny in return; con- 
veys our precious packages swiftly and safely; and with the 
cooperation of the telegraph brings us immediately to the 
bedside of sick or dying friends. 

A fast horse travelling eight miles an hour is burdened 
by the weight of one man; a locomotive has the draught- 
power of two thousand horses, and rushes through space at 
the rate of sixty miles an hour, with a load of a hundred 
tons, yet feels no fatigue. In the year 1804 it took four 
days to get from New York to Boston; now it takes six 
hours. In 1817 it cost one hundred dollars to transport a 
ton of freight from Buffalo to New York, and required 
twenty days to get it there; now it takes a few hours and 
costs a few mills. The twenty thousand locomotives of the 
United States do the work of forty million horses. The 
contrast in the matter of speed between travel to-day and 
travel sixty or seventy years since is well illustrated by a 
few paragraphs printed in the London " Times" in 1876. In 
one of the December issues of that year, you may see the 
letter of an English subscriber, who writes in a high 



* For a valuable coup d'oeil of the changes wrought by railroads in urban 
life, see a chapter by Chas. F. Adams, Jr., in the "Memorial History of 
Boston," entitled " The Canals and Railroad Enterprise of Boston," 



IKTEODUCTIOIT. 5 

dudgeon, because, being in Cologne on Saturday, the fourth 
day of December, and having invited a party of friends to 
dine with him in London on the following day, he was 
actually (owing to some carelessness of the compilers of 
the official time-tables) delayed with his servants and horses 
for one hour and fifteen minutes, had his dinner spoiled 
(and his temper too), and had been obliged to stand in the 
open air for one hour (probably wrapped up comfortably in 
the richest furs). Imagine an English gentleman, even as 
late as the year 1825, writing from Cologne to his friends 
in London, and inviting them to dine with him at his home 
in the latter city, on the following day! With what sad 
forebodings they would have tapped their foreheads, and 
with what haste the gentleman's afflicted relatives would 
have made preparation quietly to convey him, on his return, 
to some private asylum for lunatics! 



CHAPTEE II. 



BEGINNINGS IN EUROPE. 



rr^HE first steam-locomotives were portentous and 
-*- uncanny-looking creatures, — ■ resembling nothing so 
much as gigantic grasshoppers, so thickly covered were 
they with levers, joints, legs and arms. The earliest loco- 
motives were road-engines, and it may readily be imagined 
that their first appearance on a lonely road would produce 
consternation in the minds of the simple-hearted villagers 
and farmers. In the Patent Museum at South Kensington, 
London, is preserved one of the earliest locomotive engines, 
namely that of Murdock, assistant of James Watt. It is 
one of the " gi'asshopper " engines. One dark night Mur- 
dock was experimenting with his new machine at Redruth, 
in Cornwall, when, by some accident, it escaped from his 
grasp and went galloping at a great pace down a lonely 
lane. Now it chanced that a venerable clergyman was 
taking an evening walk in this lane, which led directly to 
his church. Suddenly he saw approaching at a furious 
rate of speed an indescribable monster, of legs, arms, 
and wheels, whose body glowed with internal fire, while 
rapid gasps for breath seemed to indicate that it was suffer- 
ing the agonies of death. The clergyman's hair actually 
stood on end with fear, and, being convinced that a fiend 
from hell was making toward him, he set up loud cries for 
help. The inventor soon appeared, however, and assured 

6 



BEGINN-INGS IN" EUROPE. 7 

the good man that the machine was no diabolical creature, 
but simply a runaway locomotive. 

Coleridge is authority for the following similar story 
about a road-engine of the Cornish inventor, Richai'd 
Trevithick, who in 1804 first applied steam power to the 
drawing of loads on a railroad: * 

As Trevithick and an assistant named Vivian were 
steaming along the road between Plymouth and Camborne, 
Vivian caught sight of a closed toll-bar just as they had 
battered down the front rails of a gentleman's garden by 
rushing against it with their engine. " Captain " Vivian 
called to his partner to slacken speed; he did so and stopped 
close by the gate, which was opened like lightning by the 
gateman. 

" What have us got to pay? " asked Vivian, careful as to 
honesty, if reckless as to grammar. 

"Na — na — na — na!" stammered the poor man, 
trembling in every limb, and his teeth chattering as if 
he had the ague. 

" What have us got to pay, I ask? " 

" Na — noth — nothing to pay ! My de — dear Mr. Devil, 
do drive on as fast as ever you can! ISTothing to pay! " 

The feverish pulsations of the steam-engine quickened 
the movements of trade; the product of the cotton-mills 
was doubled; the demand for rapid transit grew more 
urgent, and numerous and quaint were the mechanical 
motors devised by sanguine inventors. It was for many 
years believed that road- locomotives would be the steam- 
vehicles of the future, and such men as Burstall, Hill, 
Gurney, Ogle, Summers, Sir Charles Dance, and Walter 
Hancock gave years of study to the perfecting of their 
respective machines. Strange monsters went puffing about 



8 WOKDEES AKD CUKIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAT. 

the land in those days. In 1813 William Brunton patented 
a railroad locomotive which was provided with legs and 
feet that clattered away at the rear of the machine at a 
great rate. Brunton thought that the wheels would not 
bite the rail hard enough to draw heavy loads (especially on 
inclines) without the aid of legs to push from behind. It 
was not then known that the bite is greater in proportion 
to the greater weight of the car or locomotive — one of the 
most important principles in railway mechanics. This 
device of legs to assist traction was applied by Goldsworthy 
Gurney to his road-locomotives, which from 1827 to 1835 
were in very successful operation in the neighborhood of 
London, where they ascended the highest hills with ease. 
In 1831 one of his carriages ran for about four months 
between Gloucester and Cheltenham; and in 1835 another 
ran between Glasgow and Paisley. But there were several 
explosions of these road-engines, and with the rapid growth 
of the railroad idea, the other method of locomotion grad- 
ually dropped out of sight.* 

The story of the origin of the steam- locomotive at the 
coal mines of Newcastle, its development by George Steph- 
enson, and first application on an extended scale to the 
Stockton and Darlington coal railroad, has been told so 
often and so well by Smiles and others, that it would be 
superfluous to dwell minutely upon it in this work. The 
Darlington road was projected in 1817 by the Quaker, 
Edward Pease ("Owd Neddy," as the miners called him), 
and was often called the Quaker line. It was thirty- 
seven miles in length, and was opened September 27, 1825. 

* At Maidstone in England, however, tliere are now in use a score and more 
of road-locomotives, which do heavy " trucking " over the streets at night when 
there is no danger of frightening horses. 



BEGi]sr]sri]srGS m eueope. 



9 



The road cost six hundred thousand dollars. N"o passenger 
traffic was originally thought of, but, there seeming to be 
quite a demand for a passenger-car, the directors deter- 
mined to furnish one, and accordingly put upon the road 
the first railroad passenger-car ever built (called " The 
Experiment"). It was a rude cabin placed upon four 




" THE EXPERIMENT." 

wheels. A row of seats ran along each side of the interior, 
and a deal table was fixed in the centre. The passenger 
receipts for the first year were about three thousand 
dollars; the annual passenger receipts of all the English 
railroads at the present time are nearly one hundred 
million dollars. The first passenger coaches on the Stock- 
ton and Darlington road were drawn each by a single horse, 
while at the same time Stephenson's engines were drawing 
the coal trains. Afterward the passenger-cars were also 
drawn by steam-power. The immediate successors of the 
"Experiment" were two "new and elegant" horse-cars 
called the " Express " and the " Defence." They were 



10 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

coacli-bodies on ti^ucks, carried passengers inside and out, 
had a lever-brake reaching up to the coachman's box, and 
were in general the prototype of those afterward used on 
the Albany and Schenectady, and the Ney York and Harlem 
railroads in the United States (see Chapter II). From 
a contemporary Scottish newspaper we learn that, consider- 
ing that there was formerly no coach at all on either of the 
roads to which the railway ran parallel, the traffic was 
thought quite wonderful. "A trade and intercourse has 
arisen out of nothing and nobody knows how." It is 
further stated that "at any bends of the road, or other 
place, when the view is obstructed, the coachman blows a 
horn to give warning of his approach to any wagons or 
vehicles that may be coming or going on the way; and in 
meeting or passing, either the coach or the vehicle goes off 
into some of the passing places, and then returns into the 
main line." 

On the opposite page is given a profile view of one of 
Stephenson's steam passenger-cars — a fragile vehicle indeed 
when compared with the massive cars of our day. The 
lower hinged doors opened into receptacles beneath the 
seats used for the stowing of luggage. The picture is 
copied from a drawing sent to the Boston and Lowell rail- 
road by Stephenson, in 1835. The famous engineer was at 
that time in the pay of the Boston and Lowell road, and 
sent over this drawing with a number of others. Mr. J. B. 
Winslow, of Boston, to whose kindness and that of Mr. E. 
H. Talbott the author is indebted for the use of the picture, 
says: "This drawing evidently was copied from one that 
was used to build the cars from, some years before its date 
(1832). I have no doubt the original was used for building 
the first passenger-car ever constructed." 



BEGIN:N"I2fGS IK EUKOPE. 



11 




12 WOKDERS AISTD CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

The day of the introduction of the steam-engines upon 
the Darlington road was celebrated by a procession of cars 
and locomotives, and by general festivities. When the 
time came for firing up the first locomotive (called the 
" Locomotion," or " Pufiing Billy"), it was found that no 
tinder-box was at hand. Thereupon one of the employes 
drew a burning-glass from his pocket, and obtained fire 
from the sun. • This act strikes the mind as highly poetical 
and appropriate; the power that propelled the engine 
emanated from sun-made coal, and the fire that liberated 
the power was also of solar origin. Thus, as the ancients 
would have thought, the fire was pure and sacred, and with 
them the act of the English fireman would have taken the 
shape of a sacred and solemn rite. But times change, and 
customs with them. 

It goes without saying that everything connected with 
the first railroad was of a rude description. There were 
no gates across turnpike roads, no brakes on the cars, 
and no signal-lamps. One kind of night-signal used by 
an engineer for stopping a train was a burning tow-line 
kindled by a shovelful of red-hot cinders. A candle stuck 
in the station window was the signal to stop, and its absence 
meant " go on." The cars had no springs and no buffers, 
and the jolting was something awful. The Stephenson 
locomotives at this time had the steam-blast, but not the 
multi-tubular boiler. 

On September 27, 1875, the semi-centennial of the origin 
of railways was celebrated at Darlington, under the au- 
spices of the Directors of the North-Eastern Eailway 
Company. One hundred thousand visitors were present at 
the Jubilee; there were flags and cannon-firings, a banquet 



BEGIiTNINGS IN EUROPE. 



13 




14 WOIS^DEES Aiq"D CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and speeches, and an exhibition of veteran locomotives, and 
other quaint relics of the early days. 

Before passing to some account of the more famous 
Liverpool and Manchester railroad, we must not omit a 
tribute of praise to Thomas Gray, of Nottingham. He was 
the first to agitate the question of passenger railways. The 
subject was his hobby, his craze; he memorialized all prom- 
inent men, wrote in all the journals, and bored everybody 
nearly to death. " Put him in a strait jacket," said the 
"Edinburgh Review"; "Such persons are beneath our 
notice," said the pompous " Quartei'l^y." Nevertheless, 
Gray's prophetic work on railways went through five 
editions during his lifetime, and he lived to see his idea 
triumphant. But such was the irony of fate that he was 
refused employment on the very road he had planned and 
helped to bring into existence, and he " died steeped to the 
lips in poverty." 

It is not generally known that the first railroads of 
England formed a step in the evolution of means of rapid 
transportation which was absolutely demanded by the most 
urgent stress of circumstances. Especially was this true of 
the Liverpool and Manchester road. The invention of 
steam spinning machinery had doubled the trade in cotton 
every twenty years, and, as a consequence, the population 
of Liverpool and Manchester had vastly increased. But the 
means of transportation were utterly insufiicient. There 
were three canals, but their day had gone; their charges 
were enormous, their monopoly odious, and the beai'ing of 
their directors haughty and dictatorial. The streets of 
Liverpool were blocked up with timber and bales of cotton 
to an incredible extent, and no entreaties of merchants 
could oret them to their factories and mills. It often took 



BEGINNINGS IN EUROPE. 15 

longer to get goods from Liverpool to Manchester (a 
distance of thirty miles) than it did to get them across the 
Atlantic Ocean from New York.. 

Then, too, the demand for fast mail coaches was loud and 
importunate. Thirty thousand horses were killed off every 
year in the attempt to make them carry the mails at the 
rate of ten miles an hour; there are many cases recorded 
where horses burst the heart, or snapped a leg from being 
over-driven.* It was high time for mechanical transit. It 
was the age of steam, and there was no steam-travel; the 
incongruity was soon removed, however, and the world saw 
a railroad-system developed with marvellous rapidity; with 
unhealthy rapidity, indeed, and feverish speculation, as we 
shall soon see, but yet, on the whole, to the lasting benefit 
of the nations concerned. 

It is amusing to read the objections that were made to 
the building of railways, at the time of the agitation con- 
cerning the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester 
road. It was affirmed that the smoke from the engine 
would kill all the birds; the sparks would certainly set 
fire to fields and houses; passengers could not breathe in 
a train going so rapidly, or they would be made worse 
than sea-sick; the boiler would burst; the railroad would 
ruin the farmer, kill all the game, and produce premature 
birth-pangs in women and the lower animals; the sacred 

* Mr. Eames (of the White Horse, Fetter Lane) keeps about three hundred 
horses; he finds them last three years in post-coaches, and as long again at a 
distance from London; he says that his drivers represent the " crossing back- 
wards and forwards through the gravel, heaped sometimes in the middle of the 
roads near London, as tearing the horses' hearts out." — Quarterly Review. 

It appears that the extra demand for coach-horses arises out of the new reg- 
ulations of the post- office, which cause the death of two horses, on an average, 
in three journeys of two hundred miles. — Yorkshire Gazette, December 37, 
18i21. 

The average life of the street-car horses of our own day is four years. 



16 WOISTDERS AlfD CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. " 

game of fox-hunting would be destroyed ; and the privileged 
castes would be mingled with the common herd. Stephen- 
son's tunnel was an object of great dread. It was said that 
" the sudden immersion in the gloom of the tunnel and the 
clash of reverberated sounds in a confined space combined 
to produce a momentary shudder, an idea of destruction, a 
thrill of annihilation"! (A medical committee was, how- 
ever, appoin1;pd, and they reported tunnels to be in no way 
injurious to the health.) The poet Wordsworth was furious 
against the profane innovation, and Euskin still thinks the 
railroad to be the invention of the devil. Another seriously 
urged objection was that thousands of coachmen and inn- 
keepers would be thrown out of employment. There was a 
grain of sense in this objection. Only a few acrid old 
fanatics rejoiced in the approaching downfall of the Boni- 
faces. It is reported that a certain French archbishop 
declared that railways were an evidence of the divine 
displeasure against ipnkeepers; they would now be pun- 
ished for having supplied meat to travellers on fast- days, by 
seeing said travellers carried swiftly past their doors. 

It is curious to read of the incredulity with which men 
listened to predictions of a rapid rate of speed in travelling. 
A prominent Liverpool gentleman said that if it should 
ever be proved possible for a locomotive engine to go ten 
miles an hour, he would undertake to eat a stewed engine- 
wheel for his breakfast. In 1671 Sir Henry Herbert had 
said: "If a man were to propose to convey us regularly to 
Edinburgh, in coaches, in seven days, and bring us back in 
seven more, should we not vote him to Bedlam?" But if 
Sir Henry had entertained such opinions of a rate of speed 
like this, what must have been the opinion of conservative 
old gentlemen of a later day, when told of cars flying 



BEGiisrNiisrGs iisr europe. 17 

througli the air at forty miles an hour? Let one anecdote 
suffice for many relating to this topic: 

When the Liverpool and Manchester railway was under 
discussion in Parliament, George Stephenson, engineer of the 
road, was examined by a special committee. The leading 
counsel of the promoters of the railway was himself a little 
sceptical about the wonders promised by the then unknown 
engineer, and cautioned him nervously and earnestly not to 
claim a speed of over fifteen miles an hour. But a member 
of the committee, thinking that he could press the simple- 
hearted witness to an absurdity, cross-examined him to the 
following effect: 

" Well, Mr. Stephenson, perhaps you could go seventeen 
miles an hour." 

The engineer promptly answered, " Yes." 

" Perhaps some twenty miles might be reached." 

" Yes, certainly." 

The member thought he had hooked his fish. 

" Twenty-five, I dare say, you do not think impossible." 

" Certainly not impossible." 

"Dangerous?" 

" Certainly not." 

" Now tell me, Mr. Stephenson," said the inquisitor in a 
tone of deprecatory indignation, " will you say that you 
can go thirty miles?" 

The answer was as before, "Certainly." 

Upon this every member of the committee leaned back 
in his chair and roared with incredulous laughter. But 
George built his road, and on the very opening day attained 
a speed of thirty-six miles an hour. 

About a year before the Liverpool road was finished, 
occurred the famous trial of engines at Rainhill (October 
2 



18 WOKDEES AHD CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAT. 

6, 1829). Four engines were entered to compete for the 
five hundred pound prize offered by the Directors. They 
were the " Novelty," — one of the builders of which was 
Ericsson, afterward constructor of our iron-clad monitors, — 
the " Sanspareil," the " Perseverance," and the " Rocket," — 
the latter, Stephenson's engine with its steam-blast and 
multi-tubular boiler. The "Eocket" fulfilled all the condi- 
tions, and obtained the prize; her driver that day was 
Charles Fox, the future builder of the Crystal Palace. 

The public opening of the road took place September 
15, 1830. There was a gay cortege of eight trains drawn 
by as many locomotives — the latter decorated with flags. 
The people were en fete, and lined the road by thousands; 
"ale almost flowed in the streets"; "all the musical in- 
struments for hundreds of miles around were got together, 
and were scraped, blown, beaten, and twanged at once, to 
an accompaniment of church bells and booming cannon." 
For the nobility and the Duke of Wellington there was a 
large and elegant car, and for the Directors and the 
musicians other cars only less fine. Each train of cars 
was distinguished b}'' its own color in the matter of flags 
and streamers. The pleasure of this historical day was 
not, however, unmixed. Poor Mr. Huskisson, member of 
Parliament from Liverpool, was run over and killed by 
the " Eocket," and there was continual apprehension of a 
violent demonstration against the Duke of Wellington, 
who was at that time Prime Minister, and had obstinately 
refused to listen to the cry for Parliamentary reform. 
Besides, it was a gloomy time, socially; the reaction of 
the Napoleonic wars was at its height, the laboring 
classes were suffering, incendiarism was rife, and popular 
discontent was deep and ominous. But the only demon- 



BEGINNINGS IN EUEOPE. 19 

stration at the railway celebration consisted in the pelting 
of the Duke's car, and in various tokens of discontent 
exhibited along the line of the road. Altogether the day 
and the spectacle were of surpassing interest, and deserve 
to be immortalized by pencil and pen for the admiration 
of posterity.* 

Turning now to France, we find there the same 
scene enacted as in England, — the same stupidity encoun- 
tered, and the same enthusiasm manifested over the final 
success. In 1830 M. Auguste Perdonnet was treated as a 
madman for delivering at L'Ecole Centrale in Paris a 
course of lectures on railroads, and maintaining that the 
introduction of them would bring about changes equal to 
those introduced by the invention of printing. But the 
first French railway (the St. Germain) was built seven 
years later, and even M. Thiers, on returning from a visit 
to England, admitted that railways presented some advan- 
tages for the transportation of passengers, so long as their 
use was limited to a few short lines centring in a great 



* Mrs. Frances Kemble, who was at the height of her prosperity at the time 
here spoken of, was invited by Steplienson, shortly before the formal celebra- 
tion, to take a ride on his locomotive. Of the famous engineer, slie says: "He 
was rather a stern-featured man, with a dark and deeply marked countenance; 
his speech was strongly inilected with his native Northumbrian accent, but the 
fascination of that story told by himself, while his tame dragon flew panting 
along his iron pathway with us, passed the first reading of the ' Arabian 
Nights,' the incidents of which it almost seemed to recall. He was wonder- 
fully condescending and kind, in answering all the questions of my eager igno- 
rance, and I listened to him with eyes brimful of warm tears of sympathy and 
enthusiasm, as he told me of all his alternations of hope and fear, of his many 
trials and disappointments, related with fine scorn how the ' Parliament men ' 
had badgeied and baffled him with their book knovs'ledge, and how, when at 
last they had smothered the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quaking 
depths of Chat Moss, he had exclaimed, 'Did ye ever see a boat float on the 
water? I will make my road float upon Chat Moss I ' " Mrs. Kemble says she 
was much pleased with "the snorting little engine." Stephenson explained 
many things to her, assured her that he would make a fine engineer of her, and 
the result of the whole was that she '■ fell horribly in love with him." 



20 WOISTDEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

city like Paris; but the public did not need great trunk 
lines. When he was asked for a charter for a railroad to 
Eouen from Paris, he refused, saying that they would 
throw him out of the tribune if he did so. " Iron is too 
dear in France," said M. Passy, minister of finance. "The 
surface of the country is too broken," said the deputy, M. 
Allier. "The tunnels would be injurious to the health of 
passengers," said M. Arago. 

The Paris and St. Germain railway (eleven miles long) 
was opened in 1837. Intense was the excitement of the 
volatile Frenchmen. ''^Triomphe merveilleuse ! '" ''''Plaisir 
inconnu!" ''^notion sans egal!'' — such were the expres- 
sions in everybody's mouth. On the opening day the train 
(says the London " Times " of that year) " started at twelve, 
to the instant, and then was the clatter of voices raised 
tenfold. ^ II part — ce coursier de feu et de fumee! He 
snorts! he snorts! His prodigious tail of vapor floats in 
the firmament! La voila!' Even when the engine had 
attained its extreme velocity, the rattling of tongues 
was continued, one person shouting into a second's ear, 
and a third shrieking at the extreme pitch of his voice. 
' Cheval magnifique! Noble and intrepid horse which noth- 
ing can stop! He devours the way before him — he snorts! 
He is clothed with thunder, like the horse of Job! Cor- 
hleu! what a delicious motion — ti'est-ce pas? Oui, c''est 
le plus grand plaisir du monde!'' " 

But the English are less sanguine than the Latins. We 
find, in private journals written at the time, a few records 
that reveal a most reprobate state of mind in the case of 
certain old gentlemen. Here are the notes of one who 
travelled over the first two English lines: — * 

*From "Notes and Queries," August 1, 1868. 



BEGINNINGS IN EUROPE. 31 

"Monday, October 11, 1830, Darlington.— Walked to 
the railroad which comes within half a mile of the town. 
Saw a steam-engine drawing about twenty-five wagons, 
each containing about two tons and a half of coals. A 
single horse draws four such wagons. I went to Stockton 
at four o'clock by coach on the railroad; one horse draws 
about twenty-four passengers. I did not like it at all, 
for the road is very ugly in appearance, and being only 
one line, with occasional tui*ns for passing, we were some- 
times obliged to wait, and at other times to be drawn 
back, so that we were full two hours going eleven miles, 
and they are often more than three hours. There is no 
other conveyance, as the cheapness has driven the stage- 
coaches otF the road. I only paid one shilling for eleven 
miles. The motion was very unpleasant — a continual 
jolting and disagreeable noise." 

On October 27, 1830, the same gentleman made a rail- 
road-journey from Manchester to Liverpool, and has left 
the following remarks upon it : 

" We wei'e two hours and a half going to Liverpool 
(about thirty-two miles), and I must think the advantages 
have been a good deal overrated, for, prejudice apart, I 
think most people will allow that expedition is the only 
real advantage gained; the road itself is ugly, though 
-curious and wonderful as a work of art. Near Liverpool 
it is cut very deeply through rock; and there is a long 
tunnel, which leads into a yard where omnibuses wait to 
convey passengers to the inns. The tunnel is too low for 
the engines at present in use, and the carriages are drawn 
through it by donkeys. The engines are calculated to 
draw fifty tons. * * * I cannot say that I at all 
liked it; the speed was too great to be pleasant, and 



22 WONDEES AifD CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

makes you rather giddy, and certainly it is not smoother 
and easier than a good turnpike-road. When the carriages 
stop or go on, a very violent jolting takes place, from the 
ends of the carriages jostling together. I have heard 
many say they prefer a horse-coach, but the majority are 
in favor of the railroad, and they will no doubt knock 
up the coaches." 

A good companion-piece to the foregoing is the follow- 
ing from the journal of Samuel Breck, an old Bostonian 
(United States):* 

" July 22, 1835. — This morning at nine o'clock I took 
passage in a railroad car (from Boston) for Providence. 
Five or six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and 
uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were made 
to stow away some thirty human beings, who sit cheek by 
jowl as best they can. Two poor fellows, who were not 
much in the habit of making their toilet, squeezed me 
into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their 
garments a villanous compound of smells, made up of 
salt-fish, tar, and molasses. By-and-by, just twelve — only 
twelve — bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were 
going on a party of pleasure to ISTewport. ' Make room 
for the ladies!' bawled out the superintendent. 'Come, 
gentlemen, jump up on the top; plenty of room there.' 
' I'm afraid of the bridge knocking my brains out,' said a- 
passenger. Some made one excuse, and some another. 
For my part, I flatly told him that since I had belonged 
to the corps of Silver Grays I had lost my gallantry, and 
did not intend to move. The whole twelve were, however, 
introduced, and soon made themselves at home, sucking 

♦Quoted by Charles F. Adams, Jr., in his valuable work on "Eailroads: 
Their Origin and Problems." 



BEGiisnsriNGs iisr eueope. 23 

lemons, and eating green apples. * * * ijij^g j,jgjj 
and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite 
and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern imjprove- 
ment in travelling. * * * ^nd all this for the sake 
of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be 
done delightfully in eight or ten." 

The sentiments expressed in the foregoing citations 
were decidedly exceptional, if we can judge from the 
records. As has been intimated, the financial success of 
railways was so immediate and the novelty of the thing 
was so fascinating, that speculation ran riot in railroad 
stock, and, in short, produced the astounding " Eailway 
Manias " that are now a part of history. A fascinating 
volume could be made on this subject alone. The best ac- 
counts that the writer of these lines has met with, are 
contained in "Frazer's Magazine" for 1844 and 1845, in 
Francis' "History of Eailways," and in the "Banker's 
Magazine." 

The first railway mania was in 1836. The whole coun- 
try was wild over the construction of new lines. Roads 
were projected between the most insignificant places. Com- 
pany after company came into existence, — many of them 
bogus ones, — and swindlers and adventurers obtained fab- 
ulous amounts of gold from the coffers of credulous in- 
vestors. In Durham, one projector began three railroads 
all running in parallel lines. Other schemes were equally 
ridiculous. One man proposed to propel his engines by 
sails, and induced a company to try them; another was 
confident that he could propel a locomotive with rockets 
at a speed of one hundred miles an hour. Another still 
invented a wooden track to be raised on stilts so as to 
allow the passage of traffic below. 



24 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

"But soon a panic came over the town, 
Heigho! says Reilly, 
Soon a panic came over the town. 
And the small men were done most excessively brown, 
Wilj', slily, gammon and bubble ! 
Heigho! says Misther Reilly." 

The bubble burst, and England was filled with distress. 
Great firms failed by the score. One hundred thousand 
laborers in Manchester, Glasgow, and Paisley were thrown 
out of employment for months, and the receipts of the 
custom house sank nearly one million pounds in a single 
quarter. 

The delusion and madness of the great mania of 1844 
and 1845 were even more widely extended. The railway 
investments made in the yeai's from 1830 to 1844 had had 
the effect of establishing such lines as were most urgently 
needed; and yet the stock of even these lines had not been 
rated at a premium until 1843. In the spring of 1844 
the mania began. Two hundred and fifty-two new roads 
were projected. In 1845 the stock of six hundred pro- 
jected railroad lines was in the market, the capital required 
for all of which amounted to two tJioiisand millions of dol- 
lars! In 1845 no less than thirty- two railway journals were 
started, and of them all only four were in existence at 
the close of 1846! "Every nook and corner of England 
which with any show of decency could be described in 
public print as 'an important district, abounding in trafiic,' 
etc., was forthwith occupied by an incipient railway com- 
pany." In Scotland and Ireland the fever was almost as 
bad. In the rural districts railway steam-engines on the 
atmospheric plan were not only to operate the railway 
lines, but employ their surplus power in impregnating 
the earth with carbonic acid and other gases, so that veg- 



BEGIKKINGS IN EUEOPE. 25 

etation might be forced forward in spite of the ordinary 
vicissitudes of weather, and corn grow at railway speed. 
" Even the caution of aged spinsters is giving way," says 
a contemporary writer; "they no longer look upon the 
railway schemes as a mockery and a snare; but, fired by 
the occasional paragraphs of the penny-a-liners in the 
papers, that Mr. So-and-so has made so many ten thou- 
sands by one investment, and so many hundred thousands 
by another, they begin to think they ought to seek a par- 
ticipation in this easily acquired wealth, and talk to their 
brokers of selling out of consols and purchasing of ' scrip.'' " 
The extent to which the craze had infected the women is 
well shown also in a vivacious article published in a con- 
temporary journal (" Bentley's Miscellany" for. 1845): 

" 'Have you got any Spitzbergen and Patagonia?' 

" ' I am sorry to say that I have.' 

*' ' Why so? they are at two premium.' 

" ' But I bought at three and a* half.' 

" ' Don't be afraid; hold on.' 

"'Hold on! I can't help myself. There is actually no 
business doing in them.' 

" ' The surest sign that they are to have a sudden and 
tremendous rise.' 

"'When?' 

" ' At the proper time. Hold on!' 

" This hint was given to me by a woman — one of con- 
sideration, — with a look and tone that would indicate a 
knowledge of things behind the curtain. I hope that she 
knows a move or two in the chequered game; if not, as far 
as I am concerned, it will not be of mucii consequence. I 
shall pay for my lesson, and that's all. Small men ought 
to stick to their trade of basket making. And I shall 



26 WONDEKS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

profit by my lesson, you may depend upon it. ' Tine fois 
pliilosophe • deux fois joueur determine.'' 

" Perhaps the men think they have the game all to 
themselves; that they alone are railroad mad. If the^ do, 
they are grievously mistaken. What is it that makes Lon- 
don by far less dull just now than it usually is during the 
autumn? Numbers of the 1)60.11 sexe have remained be- 
hind to look after the main point, for emphatically is 
railroad speculation considered the main point amongst, 
I am sorry to say, too many of them at this moment. 
Paris, for the same reason, has been scarcely more gay at 
any season of the year than the present. A certain fash- 
ionable and fascinating marchioness (an Englishwoman, 
too), a resident of the gay capital of delights, won twenty- 
five thousand pounds there a few weeks back in one helle 
swoop. You would like to know how she did it. A brill- 
iant company were assembled at the hotel of a Eussian 
nobleman in the Fauboufg St. Honore; and between the 
pauses of the danse, a distinguished singer of the opera 
was entertaining the guests with a favorite air from 
' Norma,' — it might be from ' II Barbiere,' or ' Don Gio- 
vanni,' or it might not. All was breathless attention, 
and intense delight. No! not all. The j^oung Marchion- 
ess of occupied a fanteiiil in a corner of the salon. 

The air was beautiful — 

"'She heard it, but she heeded not — her eyes 
Were with her heart, and that was far away,' 

very far away — in the share-market! for even into such 
a gentle bosom, and amidst such a scene, the ruling pas- 
sion of the age, — call it avarice, gambling, what you will, 
— could enter and assert its empire. 

" ' I have got a better song for your ladyship than even 



BEGINNINGS IN EUROPE. 27 

Mario's song,' said a young and gallant cavaliei-, approach- 
ing her softly, and seating himself on an unoccupied couch 
beside her. 

" ' What is it? ' said the Marchioness hastily. 

" ' Within the last hour the King has expressed to the 
minister his approval of the Great Northern line. Hush! 
don't speak or appear agitated; we may be observed.' 

'"WasR there?' 

'"Yes! — closeted for two hours with you know whom; 
and he left the palace about a minute or two before me 
with a joy in his face that I shall never forget. It spoke 
millions. You must see him to-morrow early; for the 
news will be over the town before evening, and the appli- 
cations will be innumerable.' 

" 'To-morrow! — to-night! ' And in a few moments, her 
Ladyship's carriage having been ordered, she left for the 
house of the great financier. 

"It was in vain that porter* and portress, valet and 
butler, major-domo and secretary, opposed the entree of 
the fair besieger. Stop a woman, indeed, when she will go 
ahead! — stop a house on fire with a single bucket of water! 
She made her way to the sanctum sanctorum — the bureau 
of bureaux. It was not her first time. Plutus was not 
petrified; he knew the goddess well. He knew, too, that 
she must be obeyed; so, to save time, every moment of 
which was worth a diamond to him that night, he obeyed 
the commands of his fair tyrant. She arranged for a pretty 
considerable transaction, and departed to sleep happily on 
her pillow. 

" From the titled dame to the actress, even to the gri- 
sette, all the women are playing the I'ailroad game in Paris. 
In London, if things are not going on pari passu, at the 



28 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

same mail- train pace, amongst the female speculators, they 
are going on fast enough, Heaven knows! " * 

An indication of the rapidity with which the delusion 
had pervaded all classes in England is afforded by the num- 
ber of witnesses who were brought up to London to testify 
to the desirability of such and such a railroad, through this 
or that region. There were thousands of these witnesses in 
town, and the service of the best hotels, with a guinea a 
day, naturally inclined them to rose-colored views of the 
particular project they were asked to favor. 

It was delicious to listen to the debate of two crack 
engineers pitted against each other in the service of rival 
lines. If a mountain stood in the way of your sanguine 
engineer, he would plunge fearlessly through it, discover in 
its bowels minerals of surpassing value, and come out safe 
and sound on the opposite side, " as though he had been 
perforating a gigantic cheese instead of hammering his 
path through whinstone coeval with creation." If a lake 
stood in his way he would be sworn that to drain it would 
be of immense advantage to the abutters, and he was " in- 
dignant at the supposition that any human being could be 
besotted enough to prefer the prospect of a budding garden 
to a clean double pair of rails beneath his bedroom window, 
with a jolly train steaming it along at the rate of some fifty 
miles an hour." 

Of course among so many speculators and manipulators, 
some became enormously rich. The great hero of the day 
was George Hudson, of York, the prototype of modern 
" Eailway Kings." During his brief reign he was a uni- 
versal favorite; a man of tremendous energy, contagious 

* Thackeray gives another ludicrous picture of railway speculation in the 
"Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche, Esq." 



BEGIJSTNINGS IN EUEOPE. 29 

enthusiasm and convincing eloquence. When he under- 
took to push a railroad, it was understood that it would be 
successful;* the choicest aristocracy of England sought his 
presence; it was reported with delight that his empire 
extended over one thousand miles of railroad ; his suddenly 
acquired wealth was enormous (he made five hundred 
thousand dollars in one day), and his benefactions gener- 
ously large. A fine arithmetician, he would lean his head 
back on his chair, cover his eyes with his hands, and arrange 
expenses and calculate dividends and interest with marvel- 
lous accuracy. He had a heavy frame, a piercing gray eye, 
gray and scanty hair, a broad and wrinkled face, harsh and 
severe in expression, but lighted up at times by a winning 
smile. When the crash came, in the tag-end of 1845, Hud- 
son's brief summer sun of glory set in clouds; he was 
called " a stain upon the nation," his accounts were said to 
show crooked transactions involving thousands of pounds. 
Like so many of his American brethren of a later date, he 
kept no books and retained no copies of his letters, so that 
it is really difficult to fix the precise amount of blame to be 
attached to him. But the general opinion of those who 
have estimated his character is that he was guilty of moral 
obliquity and of rash investments of money, although his 
railroads were laid in well chosen localities, and ultimately 
proved successful. 

♦Listen to Carlyle's sarcasm: "The practical English mind, contemplating 
its divine Hudson, says with what remainder of reverence is in it: 'Yes, you 
are something like the Ideal of a Man ; * * * You find a dying railway ; 
you say to it, Live, blossom anew with scrip; — and it lives and blossoms into 
umbrageous scrip, to enrich with golden apples, surpassing those of the Hes- 
perides, the hungry souls of men. Diviner miracle what God ever did? Hud- 
son, though I mumble about my thirty-nine articles, and the service of other di- 
vinities, — Hudson is my God, and to him I will sacrifice this twenty-pound note; 
If perhaps he will be propitious to me.' "— Lattbk-Dat Pamphlets, No. VII. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 

AMEEICA not only ranks first among the nations m 
-^ -*- the development and extension of the railroad, but in 
this country the origin of the institution was entirely inde- 
pendent of that in England. We can match Richard Ti-ev- 
ithick with Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia; and Thomas 
Gray with Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken. Our first 
locomotives were entirely home-made, and as quaint and 
curious as they were unique. In short, the fertile genius 
of the American seized upon the locomotive from the very 
start as just the tool needed for the rapid conquest of the 
Continent, and new-world railway appliances are now con- 
fessed to be unsurpassed in ingenuity and efiiciency. 

In the very year that Trevithick finished his Pen-y-dar- 
ran locomotive, Oliver Evans traversed the streets of Phila- 
delphia with a steam-wagon, or boat on wheels, which he 
called the "Oruktor Amphibolis." Evans has been called 
the Watts of America, on account of his numerous inven- 
tions of steam machinery. In 1813 he published a little 
volume in which he made the following remarkable 
prophecy : 

" The time will come when people will travel in stages 
moved by steam-engines from one city to another, almost as 
fast as birds can fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour. 

"Passing through the air with such velocity, changing 

30 



THE riEST AMEKICAiq" RAILKOADS, 31 

the scenes in sucli rapid succession, will be the most exhila- 
rating exercise. 

" A carriage will set out from Washington in the morn- 
ing, the passengers will breakfast in Baltimore, dine at 
Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day. 

" To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid 
(so nearly level as not to deviate more than two degrees 
fi'om a horizontal line), made of wood or iron, on smooth 
paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the 
carriages, so that they may pass each other in different 
directions, and travel by night as well as by day; and the 
passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as 
they now do in steam stage boats. 

" Twenty miles per hour is about thirty-two feet per 
second, and the resistance of the air will then be about one 
pound to the square foot; but the body of the carriages 
will be shaped like a swift-swimming fish, to pass easily 
through the air. * * * 

" The United States will be the first nation to make this 
discovery, and to adopt the system, and her wealth and 
power will rise to an unparalleled height." 

This foreshadowing of the railroad is even more remark- 
able than that of old Erasmus Darwin, embodied in the 
well known lines: 

"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar 
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car." 

Darwin's " rapid car " was only a " fiery chariot," as he 
called it, or steam locomotive for common roads. As to the 
prophecy of "Mother Shipton," 

"Carriages without horses shall go, 
And accidents fill the world with woe," 

it is sad to have to admit that it is an unblushing forgery. 



32 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

The real " Mother Shipton," it is now known, is a certain 
Charles Hindley, of London, who about 1867 forged the 
prophecies which he published to the world under the ficti- 
tious name'. 

Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken, shares with Oliver 
Evans and Thomas Gray the honor of being the first to 
propose plans for steam railroads for passengers and 
freight. In 1812, when the only locomotive in the world 
was that of Trevithick, he wrote to the New York Commis- 
sioners for the Improvement of Internal Navigation (the 
chairman of whom was Gouverneur K. Morris) to this effect: 
"Let a railway of timber be formed, by the nearest pi^acti- 
cable route between Lake Erie and Albany, the angle of 
elevation in no part to exceed one degree, or such an eleva- 
tion, whatever it may be, as will admit of wheel carriages, 
to remain stationary, whenever no power is exerted to pro- 
pel them forward. This railway throughout its course to 
be supported on pillars raised from three to five or six feet 
above the surface of the ground. The carriage wheels of 
cast iron, the rims flat, with projecting flanges, to fit on the 
surface of the railways. The moving power to be a steam- 
engine nearly similar in construction to the one on board 
the ' Juliana,' a ferryboat plying between this city and 
Hoboken." 

Colonel Stevens said, also, that if the Indian proa could 
be driven through the water at the rate of twenty miles an 
hour, he saw no reason why locomotives might not move at 
the rate of one hundred miles an hour, on smooth rails. 
But the commissioners objected to the cost, and urged the 
then unexploded theory that the locomotive would not have 
grip, or bite, enough to draw a heavy load. Colonel Ste- 



THE PIEST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 33 

vens replied that his road could be tested at an expense of 
about three thousand dollars. But nothing was done. 

As nearly everybody interested in railroads is aware, 
the first actual iron road in the United States was the old 
" Granite railroad " of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was con- 
structed in 1826 by Gridley Bryant, and received great 
financial aid from Thomas Handasyd Perkins, of Boston. 
The enterprise excited deep interest throughout the country, 
and the road is referred to as a model in all the early 
papers and legislative documents relating to the first rail- 
roads. Bryant had closely studied the railroads of George 
Stephenson, but was himself an inventor of new railroad 
appliances, such as the switch, portable-derrick, and eight- 
wheeled car; all of which were first used on the Quincy 
railroad. Bryant's claim to the invention of the eight- 
wheeled car was unsuccessfully disputed in the courts by 
Boss Winans, who constructed the first eight-wheeled car 
used on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, patenting his 
invention in 1834. This litigation about the movable truck 
lasted five years, and cost, it is said, two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars. Bryant's car was only the combination 
of two four-wheeled trucks for the transportation of long 
pieces of granite designed for columns; the courts, however, 
decided in his favor, but not before Winans had made 
immense sums from his patents. Winans died worth, it is 
said, over twenty millions of dollars, while Bryant, who 
had not patented his devices, had no legal right to royalty, 
and never, in fact, received a cent for his invention of the 
car. 

The Quincy railroad was designed and built by those 
interested in getting material for the Bunker Hill Monu- 
ment from the five granite quarries of Quincy. The road 



34 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

had a considerable incline from the quarries toward the 
landing-place on the Neponset Eiver, and a single horse 
drew immense loads over the rails. From the wharf the 
granite blocks were towed around the harbor by a steam 
tow-boat and landed at Charlestown. The total cost of the 
railroad was thirty-four thousand dollars; the distance trav- 
ersed was three miles, and there was a double track 
constructed of stone ties eight feet apart, upon which 
were laid longitudinal beams plated on the top with iron. 
The cars carried their load on a platform under the axle, or 




FIRST AMERICAN RAILWAY (THE "GRANITE ROAD"). 

if the blocks were large, they were slung in chains. The 
wheels of the cars were of wood, six feet in diameter, and 
shod with iron one-half of an inch thick, with a flange on 
the inner side of the rim. When the snow came they 
invented a railroad snow-plough, — the first ever made; it is 
thus spoken of by a contemporary writer: "Even the late 
snow, which is deeper than has before fallen for several 
years, has presented no obstruction. On first passing, 
while the snow was light, two pieces of plank were placed 
before the car, meeting in an angle at the centre, and 
drawn along the rails, and by this means the snow was 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 35 

effectually removed, so as to render the travelling of the 
wheels as free as in summer." In 1871 the old Granite 
railway ceased to exist, being purchased by the Old Colony 
railroad, and the original track was replaced by a new one.* 

The next railroad in order of time was the "Gravity" 
road, of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, finished in May, 1827. 
It was nine miles in length and was built to carry coal from 
the Summit mines in Carbon county, Pennsylvania, to a 
landing on the Lehigh River. The road consisted of a 
series of inclines, and the motive force was of a double 
nature — gravity and mule-power. The mules were 
allowed to ride down the inclines, a peculiar kind of 
platform being designed for their use. It is said that they 
learned to enjoy the ride so much that nothing could 
induce them to walk down the slopes. 

In 1828 a Dry Dock railway was in use at Burnt Mill 
Point, New York city. It was used to hoist ships out of the 
water for repairs, and consisted of a cradle travelling on 
small iron wheels over an inclined plane, which projected 
several hundred feet under water. A stationary steam- 
engine supplied the power; and horse-power was also used 
at times.f 

The next railroad was that built by the Delaware and 
Hudson Canal Company to connect their mines at Carbon- 
dale with the town of Honesdale — the terminus of the 
canal. It is a gravity railroad, and its present appearance 



* The fullest descriptions of the Qiiincy railroad are given in Nathan Hale's 
" Remarks on the Practicability, etc., of a Railroad from Boston to the Connecti- 
cut River," Boston, 1827, and in the chapter on Canals and Railroads in Volume 
IV of the "Memorial History of Boston." The cut above given originally ap- 
peared in C. H. Snow's " Geography of Boston" (Carter and Hendee, 1830). 

tSee "Picturesque New York," A. T. Goodrich, 1828. The author has 
never seen this road referred to in any other work on railways. 



36 WOIsTDERS AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY, 

and machinery will be described in Chapter VIII, " Moun- 
tain Eailways," where the reader will also find descriptions 
of the Old Portage railroad over the Alleghanies, and the 
Old Mountain Top Track road of Virginia. In 1829 the 
canal company's road had only wooden rails and was oper- 
ated by mule-and-horse-power. It tvas upon this road that 
the first revolution on American soil of the driving-wheel of 
a locomotive was made. The fame of the doings of S*ph- 
enson and others in England had reached America in 1825, 
and in 1828 Mr. John B. Jervis, engineer of the Delaware 
and Hudson canal, sent over his assistant, Horatio Allen, to 
England to be present at the Rainhill contest of competing 
locomotives, and commissioned him to buy three of the best 
in England. Young Allen tried to get Stephenson's 
services in the construction of the three locomotives; but 
Stephenson was too busy to attend to them; so they were 
finally constructed by Foster Raswick and Company, of 
Stourbridge. The first one arrived in New York in May, 
1829. It was one of the "grasshopper" make, and had a 
fierce lion's head painted in red on the front of the boiler — 
hence its name, or sobriquet, the "Stourbridge Lion." It 
was first exhibited at the West Point Foundry, foot of 
Beach Street, New York city (the birth-place of so many 
of the early American locomotives), and then taken to 
Honesdale. The trial-trip occurred on the 8th of August, 
1829. The whole population within a radius of forty miles 
turned out to see the spectacle, and an old Queen Anne 
cannon was brought up from New York to add its voice to 
those of the people. Honesdale is named after Philip Hone, 
once mayor of New York. In 1829 it was a town of only 
a few hundred inhabitants, but is now a city of considerable 
size. 



THE FIEST AMEKICAN RAILEOADS. 



37 




(By courtesy of the ■• R:nlway Age.") 
THE "STOURBRIDGE LION." 



The track of the railroad consisted of hemlock rails 
spiked to hemlock ties. Having been laid in summer, the 
unseasoned rails had got a good deal warped and twisted 
before the opening day. The road crossed the Lackawaxen 
River over a frail hemlock trestle, one hundred feet in 
height, and as the locomotive was found to weigh seven 
tons instead of four, as the contract had stipulated, it was 
feared by everybody that the trestle would not bear its 
weight. Mr. Horatio Allen, who had charge of the engine, 
was implored by many prominent men who were present 
not to attempt to cross the river. But the gai'land of glory 
and fame was floating before the eyes of the young engi- 



38 WONDERS AND CDEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

neer, and after running slowly backward and forwai'd a 
few times before the assembled multitude, he pulled the 
throttle-valve open, and, shouting a loud good-bye to the 
crowd, dashed swiftly away around the dangerous curve, 
and over the swaying bridge. After running a few miles 
he returned in safety, amid the shouts of the people and 
the booming of the cannon. 

The locomotive was a success, but the company was not 
rich enough at that time to purchase iron rails, and the 
wooden ones proving too frail for the engine, it was housed 
in a shanty, on the canal dock, where it lay for years a 
prey to rust and deca.j. The boiler was afterward used in 
a foundry at Carbondale ; the pump was used for several 
years by an employe of the company, and finally lost; and 
the rest of the old hulk was partly hacked to pieces by relic 
hunters, and partly sold for old iron. Horatio Allen, who 
figured so conspicuously on this occasion, is a graduate of 
Columbia College. He built the first eight- wheeled locomo- 
tive, and has been successively assistant engineer on the 
Croton Aqueduct, i^resident of the New York and Erie 
I'ailroad, president of the American Society of Civil Engi- 
neers, and consulting engineer of the great New York and 
Brooklyn bridge. 

The curtain next rises upon an unusually attractive 
scene in which the figure of the noble philanthropist and 
manufacturer, Peter Cooper, is the centre of interest. It 
curiously marks the recent origin of the railroad system that 
the man (Peter Cooper), who built the first railroad loco- 
motive ever made in America, was alive in 1882, and yet 
was forty years old when he constructed his locomotive. 
Mr. Cooper not only built the first American locomotive, 
but what was more important, he proved that it could run 



THE FIEST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 39 

at a high rate of speed round curves of a short radius. In 
consideratioia of these services he has been called " The 
Father of the Locomotive System in America." 

In 1826 Baltimore woke up to the fact that she must do 
something to regain the trade that the Erie canal and the 
roads of Pennsylvania wei'e taking out of her hands. It 
was decided to build a railroad through the Potomac Val- 
ley and over the Alleghanies. The first section of the road 
was opened in 1830. It consisted of a double track extend- 
ing thirteen miles to Ellicott's Mills. " What motive- 
power shall we have?" that was the great question. The 
horse-car experiment did not pay, and various other devices 
were tried. Evan Thomas built for the road a car with 
sails, which ran when the wind was favorable. Baron 
Krudener, Russian envoy to this country, rode on this car, 
and managed the sail himself, declaring that he was 
charmed with his ride. But the thing was of little value. 
Then they tried a horse-power car, a machine somewhat 
like the wood-cutting apparatus we see at railway stations, 
only the horse on the Baltimore road propelled himself and 
his fellow passengers over the rails instead of sawing wood 
with a buzz-saw. The horse-power car worked pretty well, 
but on one occasion, when drawing a number of editors 
and other representatives of the press, the machine ran 
into a cow, and ignominiously upset the inspecting com- 
pany in a ditch. And, inasmuch as the company had to 
endure thereafter innumerable bad jokes and puns (for 
example, "the coived editors"), they naturally passed an 
unfavorable verdict upon the machine which had subjected 
them to this annoyance. 

How it next came to pass that Peter Cooper built his 
little engine, the " Tom Thumb," and made his famous 



40 WOISTDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 



trial-trip on the railroad, he must be allowed to tell in his 
own graphic way:* 

"It is now about fifty-five years since I was drawn into 
a speculation in Baltimore. Two men there, whom I knew 
slightly, came up and asked me to join them in buying a 
tract of three thousand acres of land within the city limits. 
It included the shore for three miles, and the new Balti- 
more and Ohio railroad was going to run through it. The 




(By courtesy of the " Railway Age.") 
PETER cooper's LOCOMOTIVE. 

road was chartered, and a little of it was graded. Its cars 
were to be drawn by horses; nobody thought of the possi- 
bility of steam. I consulted my friend Gideon Lee, who 
served, as alderman with me fifty-two years ago now, and 
he advised me that it was a good scheme. He "said the land 
was worth five hundred thousand dollars, whether the road 
was ever finished or not. So I went to Baltimore, saw the 
land, and agreed to take one-third, and paid my money, 
twenty thousand dollars. 

* As reported in the Boston " Sunday Herald " for July 9, 1882. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 41 

" They drew on me every little while for taxes, etc., and 
when, at the end of a year, I went down again, I found out 
that neither of my partners had paid a cent on the pur- 
chase, and that I had been sending down money to pay 
their board! The Baltimore and Ohio railroad had got 
some wooden rails laid, and thinking it might amount to 
something, I bought my swindling partners out, paying one 
of them ten thousand dollars. I thought it would pay, for 
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had run its tracks down 
to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles, and had laid 'quakehead' 
rails, as they called them, strap rails, you know, and had 
put on 'horses. Then they began to talk about the English 
experiments with locomotives. But there was a short turn 
of one hundred and fifty feet radius around Point of Rocks, 
and the news came from England that Stephenson said that 
no locomotive could draw a train on any curve shoi'ter 
than a nine hundred foot radius. The horse-car didn't pay 
and the i-oad stopped. The directors had a bad fit of the 
blues. I had naturally a knack at contriving, and I told 
the directors that I believed I could knock together a loco- 
motive that Avould get the train around Point of Rocks. I 
found that my speculation was a loss unless I could make 
the road a 'go.' 

" So I came back to New York and got a little bit of an 
engine, about one horse-power (it had a three and a half 
inch cylinder, and fourteen inch stroke), and carried it back 
to Baltimore. I got some boiler iron and made a boiler, 
about as big as an ordinary wash-boiler, and then how to 
connect the boiler with the engine I didn't know." 

" You had been a worker in wood, I believe," said the 
gentleman to whom this narrative was imparted by Mr. 
Cooper. 



42 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

"Yes, and in iron, too. I had not only learned coach- 
making and wood carving, but I had an iron-foundry and 
had some manual skill in working in it. But I couldn't 
find any iron pipes. The fact is that there were none for 
sale in this country. So I took two muskets and broke off 
the wood part, and used the barrels for tubing to the 
boiler, laying one on one side and the other on the other. 
I went into a coach-maker's shop and made this locomotive, 
which I called the ' Tom Thumb,' because it was so insig- 
nificant. I didn't intend it for actual service, but only to 
show the directors what could be done. 1 meant to show 
two things: first, that short turns could be made; and, 
secondly, that I could get rotary motion without the use 
of a crank. I effected both of these things very nicely. 
I changed the movement from a reciprocating to a rotary 
motion. I got steam up one Saturday night; the presi- 
dent of the road and two or three gentlemen were stand- 
ing by, and we got on the truck and went out two or three 
miles. All were very much delighted, for it opened new 
possibilities for the road. I put the locomotive up for the 
night in a shed. All were invited to a ride Monday — a ride 
to Ellicott's Mills. Monday morning, what was my grief 
and chagrin to find that some scamp had been there, and 
chopped off all the copper from the engine and carried it 
a.wa.y — doubtless to sell to some junk dealer. The copper 
pipes that conveyed the steam to the piston were gone. It 
took me a week or more to repair it. Then (on Monday it 
was) we started — six on the engine and thirty-six on the 
car. It was a great occasion, but it didn't seem so impor- 
tant then as it does now. We went up an average grade 
of eighteen feet to the mile, and made the passage (thirteen 
miles) to Ellicott's Mills in an hour and twelve minutes. 



THE FIKST AMEEICAN RAILROADS. 43 

We came back in fifty-seven minutes. Ross Winans, the 
president of the road, and the editor of the ' Baltimore 
Gazette,' made an estimate of the passengers carried and 
the coal and water used, and reported that we did better 
than any English road did for four years after that. The 
result of that experiment was that the bonds of the road 
were sold at once, and the road was a success." 

From other sources* we are enabled to supplement Mr. 
Cooper's narrative in a few points. One of the passengers 
— Mr. H. H. Latrobe — says that the trip to the Mills was 
most interesting. The curves were passed without diffi- 
culty, at a speed of fifteen miles an hour; the grades were 
ascended with comparative ease; the day was fine, the com- 
pany in the highest spirits, and some excited gentlemen of 
the party pulled out memorandum-books, and when at the 
highest speed, which was eighteen miles an hour, wrote 
their names and some connected sentences, to prove that 
even at that great velocity it was possible to do so. 

The " Tom Thumb " weighed about a ton; the wheels were 
two and a half feet in diameter; the fuel, anthracite coal. 
The smoke-stack "looked like an aggravated putty-blower," 
The tubes in the upper part of the boiler were an antici- 
pation, or rather an independent and almost simultaneous 
invention of the multi-tubular arrangement of George 
Stephenson, which, together with the steam-blast, gained 
him the victory at Rainhill, a year after the "Alderman 
Cooper" experiment. It is important to remember the 
fact of the prior and independent invention in America of 
two of the fundamental features of all locomotives. Mr. 
Cooper's steam-blast apparatus consisted of a sort of bel- 

*W. H. Brown's "History of the First Locomotives in America," and the 
"Baltimore Gazette." 



44 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

lows, which was operated by a belt running over a drum 
and geared with the car-wheels. But it was this very 
steam-blast device which lost the " Tom Thumb " the race 
with a horse owned by the stage proprietors, Stockton and 
Stokes, of Baltimore. The little engine had been out a 
number of times, and although starting off with much 
puffing and leaking of steam from its joints, had answered 
all the expectations of its ingenious inventor. But on 
the day of trial just described, the stage proprietors, hav- 
ing learned that the engine was on the track, "brought 
down a gallant gray of great beauty and power, and 
attached him to a car on the second track, and met the 
returning engine at the Relay House — so called because 
relays of horses were generally procured there. From 
this point they determined to have a race back, and away 
went horse and engine — the snort of the one keeping time 
to the puff of the other. The gray had the best of it at 
first, getting a quarter of a mile ahead while the engine 
was getting up its steam. The blower whistled, the steam 
blew off in vapory clouds, the pace increased, the passengers 
shouted, the engine gained on the horse, lapped him, the 
silk was applied, the race was neck-and-neck, nose-to-nose; 
then the engine passed the horse, and a great hurrah 
hailed the victory. But just at this moment, when the 
gray's master was about giving up, the band which turned 
the pulley that moved the blower slipped from the drum, 
the safety valve ceased to scream, and the engine, for want 
of breath, began to wheeze and pant. In vain Mr. Cooper, 
who was his own engineer and fireman, lacerated his hands 
in attempting to replace the band on the wheel; the horse 
gained on the machine, and passed it, to his great chagrin; 
and, although the band was presently replaced, and steam 



THE FIEST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 



45 



again did its best, the horse was too far ahead to be over- 
taken, and came in winner of the race." 




THE "BEST FRIEND." 



The first regular passenger railroad in America worked 
by steam-locomotives was the Charleston and Hamburg, 
of South Carolina, chartered in the year 1827. The road 
was eventually one hundred and thirty-six miles long, ex- 
tending from Charleston to Hamburg on the Savannah 
River, but only six miles were completed during the first 
year. The first American-built locomotive for actual ser- 
vice on a railroad was the " Best Friend," built for this 
South Carolina road in the West Point Foundry, and first 



46 WOJSTDERS AND CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. 

operated on the track in November or December, 1830. 
The horse-power and sailing car* experiments had been 
tried by the directors of this southern road, too, but had 
not proved of practical value. A premium of $500 had 
been offered by the directors for the best horse-power car, 
and it had been taken by Mr. C. E. Detmold, for a machine 
in which the horse worked on* an endless-chain platform. 
His machine was called " The Flying Dutchman." But 
the new steam-engine captivated everybody, and it was 
resolved to use no other motor on the new railroad. This 
was a courageous step to take at that early date, and South 
Carolina people can now boast that the directors of the 
first passenger railroad in that state, and in the United 
States, were the earliest railroad officials in the world to 
disown all motors except steam. The " Best Friend " had a 
vertical boiler devoid of fire-tubes and looking very much 
like a gigantic beer-bottle. The furnace at the bottom of 
the boiler was surrounded with water, and protuberances 
called teats ran out from its sides and top in order to 
secure more heating surface. The machine ran for about 
a year and then exploded its boiler, owing to the unsuc- 
cessful attempt of the negro fireman to stop the annoying 
hissing of the steam by sitting on the safety-valve. The 
negro had his thigh broken, and afterward died from the 
effects of the accident. The engineer, Nicholas W. Dar- 
rell, was at the same time pretty badly scalded. On Jan-^ 
uary 15, 1831, the managers of the road, having obtained 
another engine, the " West Point," celebrated the anniver- 
sary of the opening of the road. The day was raw and 
chilly, but the few hundred guests and stockholders that 
assembled are reported to have had a pleasant and even 

*For an account of the sailing car experiment, see Chapter VII. 



THE FIRST AMERICAISr RAILROADS. 47 

"hilarious" time. A negro band discoursed sweet music, 
and, to allay the fears of the nervous, a car loaded with 
cotton bales was placed between the locomotive and the 
passengers. 

Suppose now a year to have passed, and let the scene 
be shifted from the land of the palmetto to the land of the 
pine, or from Charleston to Albany, New York. It is ten 
o'clock in the morning of August 9, 1831. At the head 
of Lydius street, two miles from the Hudson Eiver, which 
creeps silverly away southward between green hills, there 
stands on a railroad track a queer-looking locomotive, and 
behind it are a tender and two strange passenger cars, 
consisting of the bodies of stage-coaches fastened upon 
railroad trucks. A great crowd is assembled, and it is 
nearly time to start the train. The railroad is the Mohawk 
and Hudson; the company has been running its cars by 
horse-power, but has recently received by river-boat from 
the West Point Foundry a new motor in the shape of the 
locomotive engine, "De Witt Clinton," — the third one 
built in the United States for actual service, and the first 
of that character ever run on a passenger railroad in the 
northern states. Accordingly, everybody is full of interest 
and cui-iosity, and at all available points along the sixteen 
miles of railroad between Albany and Schenectady, the 
farmers are out in force, with their teams and families, to 
see the wonderful iron steed. It happens that a travelling 
silhouette-artist, named William H. Brown (afterward 
author of the work on the " First Locomotives in Amer- 
ica"), is in Alban}'^ on this gala-day, and, finding every- 
body going to see the locomotive, concludes to go likewise ; 
for artist Brown is in the habit of snipping out of black 
paper not only very good individual portraits, but also 



48 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

representations of whole groups of people, as well as race- 
courses, harbors, buildings, etc. Arrived in presence of 
the curious train of cars, he sees his opportunity for 
securing a nice advertising plum; so he whips out a letter 
from his pocket, inverts his hat for a desk, and hastily 
makes a rough drawing of locomotive and tender, and the 
first two passenger-coaches. In the evening of the same 
day he neatly cut out of a sheet, or sheets, of black paper, 
six feet in length, his now famous profile-picture, — mod- 
elled upon the sketch, — and, after exhibiting it in Albany, 
presented it to the Connecticut Historical Society, where 
it is still cherished as one of the society's choicest treas- 
ures. It has often been reproduced in print.* 

But conductor John T. Clark, having stepped from plat- 
form to platform outside the coaches to collect the tickets 
(previously sold at hotels and other public places through- 
out the city), now mounts a little buggy- seat at the top 
of the tender, and blows a tin horn as the signal for 
departure: the engine starts with a great jerk; and to the 
accompaniment of much puffing and wheezing from it, 
and loud shouts from the crowd, the train moves off amid 
a cloud of smoke and a shower of sparks, and goes " thun- 
dering along " toward Schenectady. Among the passen- 
gers are profile-artist Brown and Judge J. L. Grillis. The 
latter gentleman has left as graphic a picture of the trip 
as the artist has of the cars and engine. Says Judge 
Gillis: 

*The faces of those in the coaches are actual likenesses, as is the case also 
with the engineer. The names of the engineer and passengers are as follows, 
beginning at the locomotive: David Matthew, engineer; first car, Erastus 
Coniing, Mr. Lansing, ex-Governor Yates, J. J. Boyd, Thurlow Weed, John 
Miller, Mr. Van Zant, Billy Winne (penny postman); second car, John Town- 
send, Major Meigs, "Old Hays" (high constable of New York), Mr. Dudley, 
Joseph Alexander (of the Commercial Bank), Lewis Benedict, and J. J. De- 
graft. 



THE FIRST AMERICA!^ RAILROADS. 



49 




50 WON'DERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

" The train was composed of coach-bodies, mostly from 
Thoi'p and Sprague's stage-coaclies, placed upon trucks. 
The trucks were coupled together with chains, or chain- 
links, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the 
locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with 
sufficient force to jerk the passengers, who sat on seats 
across the top of the coaches, out from under their hats; 
and in stopping they came together with such force as to 
send them flying from their seats. 

" They used dry pitch-pine for fuel, and there being 
no smoke or spark catcher to the chimney, or smoke-stack, 
a volume of black smoke, strongly impregnated with 
sparks,* coals, and cinders, came pouring back the whole 
length of the train. Each of the outside passengers who 
had an umbrella raised it as a protection against the smoke 
and fire. They were found to be but a momentary pro- 
tection, for I think in the first mile the last one went over- 
board, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, 
when a general melee took place among the deck-passen- 
gers, each whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. 
They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at 
the first station." At this point a successful experi- 
ment was tried for the purpose of remedying the terrible 
bumps and jerks that were endangering the beaver hats 
of the dignitaries, and creating such a panic among the 
second-story passengers. The three links in each coupling 
having been stretched to their extreme tension, a I'ail from 
the next fence was extended horizontally between each pair 
of cars, and fastened to its place by means of the packing-. 

*The author is told, by those who rode on the first American trains, that 
the sparks from wood-burning locomotives, previous to the invention of the 
spark-arrester, were often as large as the thumb-nail, and even larger. 



THE FIRST AMEBIC AK RAILEOADS. 51 

yarn used for the cylinders.* This proved satisfactory, 
and after a run to Schenectady, where refi^eshments were 
partaken of, the train returned to Albany. 

" The incidents off the train," continues Judge Gillis, 
" were quite as striking as those on board. A general 
notice of the contemplated trip having been given, it 
excited not only the curiosity of those living along the 
line of the road, but of persons at a distance, causing a 
large collection of people at all the intersecting roads 
along the route. Everybody, together with his wife and 
all his 'children, came in all kinds of conveyances, and, 
being as ignorant of what was coming as were their horses, 
drove up to the railroad as near as they could get, only 
looking for the best position to secure a view of the train. 
As it approached, the horses took fright and wheeled, 
upsetting buggies, carriages, and wagons, and leaving for 
parts unknown to the passengers, if not to their owners, 
and it is not now positively known if some of them have 
yet stopped." Such was the first locomotive-trip in New 
York. 

Albany in 1831 was the centre of a large amount of 
stage travel, and more capital was embarked in it than in 
any other enterprise of the time. " Lines of stages di- 
verged to every point of the compass; and the streets of 
Albany were thronged with vehicles arriving and departing, 
sometimes in long processions, at every hour of the day and 
night." t We are told that on the completion of the rail- 
road just described, many hundreds of worn-out stage- 
horses were turned out to die. It would seem, therefore, 

*Mr. Charles F. Adams, Jr., has noted the fact I hat this was the first rude 
and spontaneous device in the direction of the modern buffer, 
t See the '• Historical Magazine," 1871, page 14. 



52 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

that in America as in England, it was liigli time for the 
railroad, and that here as there it supplied an urgently felt 
want. 

It should be added that the old Mohawk and Hudson 
railroad now forms the eastern terminal portion of the New 
York Central road. In 1831 there were not — according to 
Thurlow Weed — above half a dozen houses in the pine- 
forest which immediately bordered the railroad between 
Albany and Schenectady. There was an incline at each of 
these cities, down which the locomotives w^ere unable to 
pass; but a stationary engine, operating a strong rope and 
winding-drum, drew the trains up and down the hills. 

In November, 1832, the first passenger train in the state 
of Pennsylvania made its trial trip, being drawn by "Old 
Ironsides," — a locomotive built by Mr. M. W. Baldwin, 
founder of the great locomotive works in Philadelphia, that 
now bear his name. The accompanying illastration shows 
the quaint appearance of both cai-s and locomotive. The 
latter had wooden spokes, and wrought iron tires. Some- 
times the eccentrics would stick fast so that the engine 
could move in neither direction. Whenever repairs were 
necessary, they were made in the night, as " Ironsides " was 
the only locomotive on the road (the Philadelphia, Ger- 
mantown, and Norristown, opened for travel in the spring of 
1832). The locomotive weighed only seven tons, but was 
thought by the directors to be so heavy that they came 
near rejecting it, in which case it is probable that its builder 
would never have constructed another. On the occasion of 
the trial trip of the " Ironsides " it was discovered that the 
wheels were too light to keep the machine on the track; so 
the builder and two machinists pushed it ahead until con- 
siderable speed had been obtained, when all jumped aboard 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 



53 




54 WOKDERS AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY, 

in order by their weight to keep the wheels down. Moreover, 
the boiler was too small for the engine, and steam could 
only be generated fast enough to keep it in motion for a 
short time, so that for a large portion of the distance from 
Philadelphia to Germantown it was necessary alternately to 
push and ride in order to cover the distance. On the return 
the connecting pipe between the tank and the boiler became 
frozen and had to be thawed out with a fire made of rails! 

One of the most curious of the early cars was the "Vic- 
tory " figured on page 55, a model of which is now preserved 
in the office of the Eastern Railroad Association in ISTew 
York. It was the first Monitor or raised roof car, and was 
run on the Philadelphia and Eeading railroad in 1836. 
The seats inside were arranged like those of an omnibus — 
around the sides. The car was entered from the side, and 
at each end was a room, — one of these used as a toilet 
closet, and the other evidently intended for a bar. It seems 
that our ancestors, in those days of univei'sal drinking, were 
unable to do without their potations even when on a rail- 
way journey. 

In the early days of the railroad in this country, freight 
cars were called " burthen cars," and trains were called 
" brigades " of cars. The freight cars were boxes a little 
longer than their width, and had a wheel at each corner. 
Many of the locomotives had enormous driving-wheels, 
twelve feet in diameter. On one road, and perhaps on 
others, a novel head-light was formed by placing a lot of 
pitch-pine on a platform car thickly covered, as to its floor, 
with sand. The car preceded the engine, and the burning 
pine-knots made a famous track-illuminator. Almost all 
the first railroads made use of wooden rails upon which 
strap iron was spiked. These strap rails had an unpleasant 



THE FIEST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 



55 




56 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

fashion of curling up, owing to the weight of the cars on 
their central parts, combined with the action of heat and 
frost. When, then, the ends of the rails were struck by a 
car- wheel they would often be forced up through the bottom 
of the car, and the engineer would sometimes be obliged to 
stop the train and pound down the " snake-head," as it was 
called, or else detail an assistant to hold it down with a 
lever while the train passed on. Old engineers say that 
often the " slab " rails would peel up around the driving- 
wheel of the engine and whiz past their chins in very 
uncomfortable proximity. Persons in the cars were often 
seriously injured by these accidents. 

The old stage-travel custom of " booking " passengers 
was at first transferred to the railroad. And the English 
ticket-agent still hooks a person for a first, second, or third- 
class coach, in this country the word car early supplanted 
coach, doubtless owing to the circumstance that we retained 
the English form of railway vehicle for so short a time. 
But the old custom of entering the names of passengers in 
a book at the railway station was in use, in Pennsylvania at 
least, as late as 1840. The old booking ledger used at Phoe-- 
nixville, Pennsylvania, on the Eeading railroad, is still pre- 
served. The first entry was made July 17, 1838. But in a 
year or two there is a manifest falling-ofif in the care with 
which names are entered. Instead of the Christian name 
and surname, some single descriptive word is used, — as 
"Boy," "Lady," "Stranger," "Friend," "Whiskers." In 
1841, by the way, the total monthly receipts of this railroad 
were seven hundred and forty-five dollars and ten cents. 

Massachusetts was slower than her sister states in the 
adoption of the railroad. The first of her citizens publicly 
to agitate the subject was Benjamin Dearborn, of Boston, 



THE FIRST AMERICAIS]"* RAILROADS. 57 

who in 1819 memorialized Congress in regard to a scheme 
of his, based upon the plans of Oliver Evans, for introduc- 
ing railroads into general use.* But the Father of the 
Railroad System of Massachusetts is Doctor Abner Phelps, 
who, at a time when the only means of transportation in 
the state (other than that of wagons and ships) were the 
boats of the Middlesex canal, connecting Boston with the 
Merrimack River, and when surveys had been made for a 
canal to connect the city with the Hudson River, publicly 
and privately urged the adoption of the new railroad sys- 
tem which was just springing into existence in England. 
Doctor Phelps's railroad was, however, to be worked by 
horse power, with paths at the sides for the horses to travel, 
as in the case of canals. In short, his road was to be mod- 
elled on the already successfully constructed Granite rail- 
road of Quincy. In calling Doctor Phelps the Father of 
the Railroad System of Massachusetts, we would not do in- 
justice to the indefatigable labors of Nathan Hale, then 
editor of the Boston " Advertiser." f His series of careful 
statistical articles on the " Practicability and Expediency 
of Establishing a Railway on One or More Routes from 

* A curious idea of Dearborn is set forth in the following paragraph of his 
respecting his proposed railroad system: "Protection from the attacks of as- 
sailants will be insured not only by the celerity of the movement, but by 
weapons of defence belonging to the carriage and always kept ready in it, to be 
wielded by the number of passengers constantly travelling in this spacious 
vehicle, where they would have liberty to stand erect and exercise their arms 
in their own defence." 

t On the occasion of the celebration of the "Silver Birthday " of Warren 
Street Chapel in Boston, the Reverend Edward Everett Hale said that he had 
often heai'd his father, Nathan Hale, foretell the future greatness of the rail- 
road. Mr. Hale further said : " As he illustrated the new invention of Stephen- 
son by the toy railroad which he had built for his own drawing-room, I was old 
enough to chafe as I saw the incredulous smile of his visitors, and the half-con- 
tempt with which they tried to turn him from the subject of his delusion." But 
not long afterward this very lad (now the famous preacher and author) rode in 
triumph on the first locomotive that ran over what is now the first five miles of 
the Boston and Albany railroad. 



58 WONDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

Boston to the Connecticut River," published in 1827, had 
a very marked influence upon thinking men, as is pretty 
conclusively shown by the fact that a Legislative Com- 
mittee was appointed in that year to examine the sub- 
ject of railroads, and they made a favorable report (alluded 
to in Chapter IX of this volume).* The railroad scheme 
was, however, bitterly opposed by the promoters and favor- 
ers of the canal. 

But in spite of opposition the railroad was adopted. 
Charters were granted first to the Boston and Lowell, and 
afterward to the Boston and Worcester and the Boston and 
Providence railroads, and the canal scheme was killed. It 
is natiiral to find the same stubborn, prehensile conserva- 
tism cropping out in Boston that we have noted in the case 
of England. Of Doctor Phelps's railroad scheme, Joseph T. 
Buckingham, then editor of the Boston " Courier," wrote to 
the following effect: 

" Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is 
said, cut off his dog's tail that quidnuncs might not become 
extinct from want of excitement. Some such notion, we 
doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimen- 
tal philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from 
Boston to Alban}^ a project which every one knows, who 
knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable, 
but at an expense little less than the market value of the 
whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, 

* Among the cnrious things in tliis funny report is one of the reasons given 
why a railroad was needed: "For many years previous to the present season, 
the snoiv of onr winters in Massacliusetts has been gradually diminislied. In- 
stead of sleighing for four months in a winter, it is now rare for so many weeks, 
and in the neighborhood of Boston, during the twelve years previous to the 
present, it has not upon an average been more than sufficient for two weeks." 
Hence wet and muddy roads, and the inability of the farmers to draw their 
produce to the market. 



THE FIRST AMERICAlsr RAILROADS. 59 

every person of common sense knows would be as useless as 
a railroad from Boston to tlie moon." 

Similar incredulity was encountered by Gridley Bryant, 
when he was seeking aid to establish his Granite railroad : 
"What do we know about railroads'?" said the thick- 
headed legislators. "Who ever heard of such a thing?" 
" Is it right to take people's land for a project that no one 
knows anything about?" 

In like manner, the inhabitants of Dorchester, as late 
as the year 1842, resolved in a town meeting, " That our 
representatives be instructed to use their utmost endeavors 
to prevent, if possible, so great a calaniitij to our town as 
must be the location of any railroad through it, and if that 
cannot be prevented, to diminish this calamity as far as pos- 
sible " by locating the road through the marshes and over 
creeks. At the present time some fifty trains a day pass 
through the nine or more railroad stations of Dorchester, 
which owes nearly all its prosperity to the institution 
opposed in 1842 with such amazing fatuity and narrow- 
ness of mind. 

The railroads to Lowell, to Providence, and to Worces- 
ter were publicly opened in the same year, 1835, but the 
first locomotive trip was made on the Boston and Worcester 
in March, 1834, and sections of the road were in use for a 
year before the formal celebration of the opening of the 
road to Worcester. At the time the road was completed to 
Newton there appeared in the Boston "Advertiser" the 
time table and cut shown on page 60. 

At Worcester a bell suspended from a tree gave the sig- 
nal for the departure of trains. Previous to the railroad, 
baggage wagons accomplished the journey of forty-four 
miles between Worcester and Boston in a week, if the 



60 WOKDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

weather was good; the locomotive performed the task in 
three hours. We are informed that at first the daily aver- 
age transportation of freight was twelve tons one way, and 
twenty-four the other, and the only freight house of the 



BOSTON AND WORCESTER RAIL ROAD. 




THE PaiTenger Cars will continue to run daily from the Depot 
near Washington Street, to "Newton, at 6andI0 O'clock , 

A.M. and.at3iOclock,P.M. and 

'ReturmngMeaYeTSTewton at/and aquaiterpastll A.M. and 

a. quarter before j-, P. Al 

Tickets forthePaffage either Way may be Kad at tRe 

Ticket Office.No. (Ji7 WAshingtonStreec,Prlce37^cents 

each, and lot the return Paffage,of theMafter oi'theCars 

Kewton 
By Order of thePresident &Director5 
a 29 E pills F. A .WILLIAMS , ClerTc. 



OLD RAILWAY TIJIE-TABLE. 

line (in Boston) could hold but two " burthen cars." Trains" 
ran from Boston to Worcester "three times each day dur- 
ing the warm season, and twice a day during the cold 
season, excepting Sundays.'' 

The earliest locomotive of the Lowell road was an 
imported Stephenson machine, which was driven for a 
time by an" imported engineer. The Lowell road made 
the mistake of laying its fish-belly rails on stone ties, 
which were in turn placed upon longitudinal walls of 
masonry sunken in the road-bed, for it was thought that 
with any less substantial support the locomotive would 
always be overcoming an ascent caused by the sinking of 
the road-bed under its weio-ht. The Boston and Provi- 



THE FIEST AMERICAIsr RAILROADS. 61 

dence road avoided this error, and adopted the elastic 
wooden bed; the original iron rails of the Providence road 
were so good that the last of them were not taken up until 
1860. 

In December, 1841, was celebrated the completion of 
the Western railroad connecting Boston with Albany by 
way of the Berkshire hills. The Boston city officials made 
a triumphal journey to Albany, and were entertained in 
the usual style; while the Albany officials returned with 
their guests to Boston, and were in turn dined and speechi- 
fied to their hearts' content. Among the guests who went 
to Albany with the Boston officials were some New Bed- 
ford gentlemen, who, " in order to lend point to the aston- 
ishing fact that, after leaving their homes in the morning, 
they would in fifteen hours be in Albany, caused some 
spermaceti candles to be moulded, which they took with 
them on their trip; and that evening the rays from those 
candles illumined the table around which took place the 
civic banquet at Albany. But the Albanians were not to 
be outdone. They were to return to Boston with their 
guests the next day, and in doing so they took with them 
a barrel of flour, the wheat for which had been threshed 
at Rochester on the previous Monday (they went to Boston 
on Wednesday), while the barrel itself was made from 
wood which, on the threshing day, had been growing in 
the tree. This flour, duly converted into bread, the 
authorities of the two cities, and their invited guests, sol- 
emnly ate at a great dinner given at the United States 
Hotel in Boston." 

We must now turn our gaze to the great interior, and 
note the quaint and curious features of a few of the early 
railroads of that resjion. 



62 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

The first railroad in Ohio was the old Mad River and 
Lake Erie, extending from Springfield to Sandusky (after- 
ward the Cincinnati, Sandusky and Cleveland, and now the 
Indiana, Bloomington and Western). The first sod was 
cut at the end of Water street, Sandusky, September 7, 
1835, amid general rejoicing and festivity. The first 
engine run on the road was the " Sandusky " ; it was the 
first in America to which a regular steam-whistle was 
affixed, and was built at Paterson, New Jersey, by 
William Swinburne, a workman in the firm of Rog- 
ers, Grosvenor and Ketchum. An English mechanical 
draughtsman, named Hodge, had failed in his plans for 
the machine, when the American, Swinburne, stepped for- 
ward and offered his services, which the firm reluctantly 
accepted, being sceptical of the value of purely American 
skill in so new and delicate a piece of work. 

In 1831 there was no railroad west of the Alleghanies 
and south of the Ohio River. In that year the wealthy 
inhabitants of Lexington, Kentucky, wishing to be thought 
no whit less enterprising than Cincinnati and Louisville, 
and even aspiring to surpass those cities in glory — 
having doubtless heard with wonder of the doings of the 
locomotive in South Carolina and New York — began to 
take measures to build a railroad of their own. Frank- 
fort was the nearest available town on the Kentucky 
River. Accordingly it was resolved to build the railroad 
to that town. Henry Clay was an infiuential stockholder 
in the road. It was finished in 1838 or 1839. The road- 
bed consisted at first of longitudinal limestone sills, ten, 
fifteen, and eighteen feet long, with cross-ties laid beneath 
them every four or five feet. The rails were strips of 
iron two and a half inches wide, fastened to the stone sills 



THE FIKST AMEBICAl^ RAILROADS. 63 

by means of lead or sulphur. The frosts of the first win- 
ter broke up the stone sills badly, and they were replaced 
by wood. Some of the rejected sills are still to be seen 
along the track. The road was laid out in a very crooked 
manner, the engineers affirming that it was an advantage 
to have it so, since the conductor could look back along 
the curves and see his train more conveniently! The cars 
were at first for passengers only. They were drawn by 
two horses or mules, and were made to hold four persons, 
like the old stage-coaches, — which latter, by the way, are 
still to be found in many parts of Kentucky, the drivers 
making the echoes of their horns ring again among the 
beautiful green hills, as they dash along over the finest 
roads in the world. 

The cars of the Lexington railroad were two-story 
structures, the lower story being for ladies and children, 
and the upper one for men, — though in warm weather 
many ladies preferred the top, at least before the locomo- 
tive was put on the road. This first locomotive was a 
ridiculous little affair made by a Lexington mechanic. It 
had no cab, and the tender was an open box-car with room 
for a small supply of wood, and for a hogshead of water 
which was filled by pumping from a well at the side of 
the road. In place of a " cow-catcher," or pilot, two large 
beams projected in front and had hickory brooms attached 
to them for sweeping the track. The blacks regarded the 
engine with awe and fear, considering it to be the work 
of the "debbil," and its disuse was hailed by them with 
joy. They thought horses good enough for them. When 
the locomotive was first put on the road, the directors cel- 
ebrated the event by inviting guests to make an excursion 
to Frankfort in a " brigade " of little platform cars. 



64 WOIiTDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

When the excursionists were drawing near to that town 
it began to snow, and lo, and behold, the engineer took 
shelter with his locomotive under a shed, and refused to 
budge an inch further, declaring that the "slick" track 
would be so dangerous that the train might be derailed! 
Accordingly, many of the passengers had to foot it home. 
Frankfort, lying in the river- valley, is at a much lower 
level than the line of the railroad of those days. So here, 
as at Albany and Schenectady, the trains were let down 
the incline by a stationary engine. On one occasion the 
cable broke, and a train of cars shot down at a fearful rate 
of speed, knocking out the end of the depot, and smashing 
things generally. This old inclined plane was afterward 
supplanted by a series of direct and reverse curves and a 
tunnel. 

The pioneer railroad of the great western prairies was 
the Northern Cross road (now the Great Wabash). It 
originally extended from Meredosia, on the Illinois River, 
to Springfield, in the state of Illinois. Its origin was in 
this wise.* In 1337, the Legislature of Illinois appro- 
priated ten million dollars (!) for a magnificent system 
of internal improvements, and a large share of this was to 
go to railroads. Work on many of these was begun, but a 
great financial crash came, and the construction of all of 
them was suspended except that of the Northern Cross, 
which was nearly completed, and was speedily finished 
through to Spi'ingfield. The rails of the road were 
" strap " rails, five-eighths of an inch thick, and were fast- 
ened to the wood by ten-penny nails sunk into the rail 

* For the material of this sketch of the first railroad of the Great West, the 
author is indebted to Mr. A. A. Graham, who published his account of the road 
in "Potter's American Monthly" for July, 1879. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 65 

until the heads were flush with the upper surface. The 
first locomotive, built by Eogers, Grosvenor and Ketchum, 
of New Jersey, was landed at Meredosia in the fall of 
1838, and on the 8th of November of that year the first 
puff of a locomotive was heard in the prairies of the West, 
whei'e to-day the smoke of these ships of the plain rises 
far off on a thousand horizons, like the smoke of ocean 
steamships sunk beneath the watery rim of the world. The 
little locomotive had no whistle, no spark-arrester, and no 
"cow-catcher," and the cab was open to the sky. Its speed 
was about six miles an hour, and where the railroad and 
the highway lay parallel to each other there was frequently 
a trial of speed between the locomotive with its " pleasure 
cars " (as they were called) and the stage coaches. Some- 
times the stages came in ahead. Six inches of snow were 
sufiicient to blockade the trains drawn by this American 
engine. A fight between a bull and the engine is narrated 
by Mr. Graham. One day as Daniels, the engineer, was 
trundling along with his locomotive he espied " a belliger- 
ent Taurus, who sternl}'' faced the train, and with tail in 
the air, head lowered in a defiant attitude, seemed like the 
valiant Fitz- James to say: 

"'This rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I.' 

" Daniels came up to him, but unfiinchingly and defiantly 
he held his place. Daniels shouted, threw sticks of wood 
at him and swore, but all to no purpose ; the bull had the 
track and meant to keep it. Daniels backed his train and 
came up again, making all the noise he could, but this only 
incensed the bull, and immovably he kept his place. The 
third time the engineer tried to scare him off by touching 
him with the engine, but there he stood, master of the sit- 
5 



66 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

uation. By this time Daniels got mad and said: ' By Dads, 
I'll try which has the hardest head ! ' 

" The meeting came near being disastrous to both, but 
Taurus went tumbling down the bank, never to repeat his 
experiment." 

It was the fate of this pioneer prairie railroad to succumb 
for a time. For some reason it could not be made to pay. 
The engineer ran the locomotive off the track, burnt out the 
flues, and finally the unlucky thing was abandoned on the 
praii'ie east of Jacksonville, where it lay for nearly a year. 
It was then purchased by General Semples, of Alton, who 
had an idea that he could introduce road locomotives on 
the plains. He put on a new set of wheels, with tires two 
feet wide, changed the engine power, and made one trial 
trip, from Alton to Springfield. But he had to take along a 
yoke of oxen to pull his machine out of the mud-holes in 
which, from time to time, it stuck fast, and so he concluded 
that that sort of motor would not pay. The wheels made 
two broad parallel tracks over the prairie, and became a 
source of great wonder to travellers who crossed them. 
Some thought that the trail was that of an enormous ser- 
pent, and two men actually followed it to Springfield, "to 
see what kind of a critter it mout be." They found the 
monster on the prairie below the city, and there it lay 
until broken up for old iron. But if the Northern Cross 
railroad thus ignominiously failed, not so did other and 
subsequent roads. They multiplied apace. In 1846, the 
Michigan Central road was in operation, and so were many 
others. 

A good idea of the Western railway car of this period 
may be obtained from the accompanying view of a car of 
the Michigan Central. It was copied from an original 



THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 



67 



schedule of rates of freight and fare, and reminds one very 
strongly of the little Sunday-school book illustrations of 
one's boyhood days. The roof is low and flat, and we 




MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD CAR, 18i8. 

shudder to think of the discomfort of the heat in summer 
and cold in winter (there being no stove) to which the 
passengers must have been subjected. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE BANDING OF THE CONTINENT. 

The road-makiDg sons of Vulcan making an uninhabited country habitable. 

— ^SCHYLUS, Eumenides. 

" "CpOR if there were to be no railroads, it was, on the 
-■- whole, rather an impertinence in Columbus to dis- 
cover America.* What is the use of a country sprawling 
out from Maine to California, from Mackinaw Bay to the 
Florida reefs, if you are to spend all your life in walking 
over it? " So think the American people, and their reply 
to this query is the great web of trunk lines that, together 
with the telegraph, forms the sympathetic nervous system 
of the nation and does perhaps more than anything else to 
compact the several states into one homogeneous common- 
wealth. 

It is hardly necessary to caution the reader against the 
mistake of the old lady who thought a railroad was called 
a " trunk line " because it carried trunks. A long rail- 
road, with its numerous branches, resembles a tree-trunk 
in more than one respect. As the latter carries up nour- 
ishment to the leaves from the roots, but produces nothing 
itself, so does a railroad carry sustenance from the farms 
of any region to the cities; it is simply a mediator between 
the two. 

*This allusion to Columbus, by Gail Hamilton, reminds one of Thomas H. 
Benton's noble conception of a colossal statue of the great discoverer, to be 
hewn out of the solid granite of the Rocky Mountains, at £ome point on the 
Union Pacific railroad, and to point with outstretched arm to the western hori- 
zon, saying to the flying passenger, " There is the East; there is India!" 



THE BANDIISTG OF THE CON"TIN"EIS"T. 69 

Many of the trunk lines of the eastern states have been 
formed by the consolidation of smaller early lines. The 
New York Central, for example, is the consolidation of ten 
small roads which lay mostly in a direct line, connect- 
ing one with another. So the Pennsylvania Central — the 
largest railroad system in the world* — leases or controls 
fifteen other lines, extending through the most productive 
portion of the country as far as to the Mississippi River. 
What splendid and powerful corporations are those which 
operate such railroads as the Midland of England, and the 
Pennsylvania Central in this country, with their long series 
of huge bridges and viaducts, their magnificent stations, 
terminal dockyards, construction and repair shops, their 
thousands of cars and locomotives and employes, and their 
income of millions of dollars! These "strong light works 
of modern engineers " are matched only by such structures 
as the Chinese wall and the highways of Peru and Rome. 
To future ages the vast embankments and tunnels of our 
railroad lines will be such objects of admiration as are to 
U.S the famous works just mentioned. 

The railroads that sprang into existence immediately 
after the demonstration of the success of the institution 
were numerous. At the close of 1832 there were nineteen 
railroads, either completed or in process of construction, in 
the United States. These roads, however, were all near the 
Atlantic seaboard. As late as 1850 Ohio had but one trunk 
line, i.e., that connecting Sandusky with Cincinnati, and in 
that year there was not a mile of railroad west of the Mis- 

* The Pennsylvania Central has in its system six thousand four hundred and 
thirty-eight miles of track. The largest single corporate railroad organiza- 
tion in the world which is under one title, with but one set of officers for the 
whole, is the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul (four thousand live hundred 
miles). The longest single line under one management is the Southern Pacific, 
extending from San Francisco to New Orleans. 



70 WOKDERS AN"D CURIOSITTES OF THE RAILWAY. 

sissippi. The first railroad out of Chicago was that connect- 
ing Galena and Chicago, chartered in 1836. The first 
land-grant of the Government was made to the Mobile and 
Ohio road in 1848. It consisted of one million acres. 

Among the first trunk-roads to secure a princely land- 
grant were the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, form- 
ing one continuous line. There was splendid audacity 
displayed in the construction of this trans- continental road. 
Everything verged on the impossible; everything was on a 
gigantic scale, as befitted the girdling of the globe. The 
history, or romance, is a double one. On one side of the 
rocky backbone of the Continent you see an army of twelve 
thousand dark specks slowly creeping westward, and spin- 
ning behind them as they move a single iron thread. For six 
hundred miles of the route there is not timber enough to 
make a cross-tie; the dwelling-houses of the labor-army are 
built on car-trucks; every supply must come from the rear; 
the lack of confidence in the enterprise is so great, that the 
laborers, like the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, mutiny and 
demand their pay in advance. But for five years their 
steady tramp is heard, — across the boundless plains, up 
the great mountain range with its whelming snow-drifts 
(they split the rocks with something better than vinegar), 
across the hot sands of the waterless desert — until the 
second army advancing from the west is met, and the last 
stitch is taken in the earth's long belt. There, near the 
head of the Great Salt Lake, they lay down a tie of polished 
laurel bound with silver bands; Nevada sends her silver 
spike, California two of gold, and Arizona three (of silver, 
iron, and gold, respectively); the last spike and the hammer 
that drives it are in electric communication with nearly all 
the fire-alarm telegraphs in the country ; the silver sledge 



THE BAKDIITG OF THE CONTIKEKT. 71 

gleams in the air, and the blow that follows is heard farther 
than any other blow ever struck by mortal man; and all 
over the continent the ringing of bells, and the booming of 
cannon, simultaneously announce the tidings of the feat, 
while locomotives from either side roll over the place of 
junction, touch pilots, and mingle their ear-splitting 
whistles with the general conclamation. 

But one half of the story is yet to be told. We have 
yet to learn how the Central Pacific was built on the other 
side of the Continent; how the five Sacramento merchants 
talked over the project in the hardware store of Huntington 
and Hopkins, at No. 5, K street; and how they turned a 
deaf ear to the ridicule poured upon them (the project was 
considered so visionary that bankers dared not subscribe to 
the stock of the road, for fear of injuring their credit); how 
they found a route through the snowy Sierras, brought their 
material around Cape Horn, imported ten thousand Chinese 
laborers, hurled thousands of tons of solid rock down 
among the pines by a single charge of nitro-glycerine, 
bolted their snow-sheds to the mountains, and filled up, or 
bridged, hundreds of chasms and valleys. " Two thousand 
feet of solid granite barred the way upon the mountain top 
where eagles were at home. The Chinese wall was a toy 
beside it. It could neither be surmounted nor doubled, and 
so they tunnelled what looks like a bank swallow's hole from 
a thousand feet below. Powder enough was expended in 
persuading the iron crags and cliffs to be a thoroughfare, to 
fight half the battles of the Revolution." * 

And so, through eight hundred miles of uninhabited 
country, through mountains of perpetual snow and across 

* " Between the Gates," by Benjamiu F. Taylor. 



72 WONDERS AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY, 

an alkali desert, the road was built. The Union Pacific cost 
about $39,000,000, and the Central about $140,000,000; 
but in the two years 1872 and 1873 the roads saved to the 
government, in the transportation of postal and war 
materials alone, the sum of $3,789,788. And yet this 
was the road that as late as 1856 had been declared as 
impracticable as a road to the North Pole. " Suppose a 
train to be snowed up eight hundred miles from Iowa in 
November, how are you going to get to it before May?" 
it was asked. And the point was apparently well taken, for 
during the first years of the operation of the road, trains 
were snowed up for weeks at a time. But snow-sheds and 
snow-ploughs and relief-trains of provisions solved the 
difficulty. " Your road-bed and your trains will be over- 
whelmed by land-slides," said the alarmists. How this 
objection was practically answered will be best illustrated 
by an example. In 1880 a vast avalanche of earth and 
rock buried the track near Alta on the California slope of 
the Nevadas; to clear it away was a month's job, if done 
by shovel and pick. But here was a passenger-train wait- 
ing to move on. In one hour a flume of boards had been 
made to tap a mountain stream near by; an hydraulic hose 
was borrowed of some gravel miners; several streams, 
under one hundred and fifty feet of pressure, were set to 
playing upon the mass of material; down rolled rocks, 
trees and earth, a hundred tons at a time, and in forty- 
eight hours the gold gravel sluicer had cleared the road; 
the track was replaced, and the train moved on amid the 
cheers of the liberated passengers. 

The Southern Pacific railroad was projected as early as 
1845 b}^ New Orleans citizens. The construction of the 
road was an enterpi'ise only less daring than that of its 



THE BA^STDING OF THE COKTIIirEN^T. 73 

predecessoi'. The Southern Pacific crosses leagues on 
leagues of hot Sahara desert where dew and rain are 
rarely found; for months at a time track-laying had to 
be suspended on account of the intolerable heat; the tools 
became so hot that they could not be handled; water for 
the men had to be carried in tank-cars; the fiei'ce mounted 
Apaches — the red Arabs of that desert — wei'e always 
hovering near, ready to strike and fly; and often the work 
of days was obliterated by one of the fierce simooms, or 
sand-storms, which so darken the sun at midday that 
through the twilight gloom the red glare of the locomo- 
tive's head-light penetrates but a little way. Here were 
indeed no snow-slides to be encountered, but something as 
baleful and obstructive; and the miles on miles of sand- 
fence of the Southei-n Pacific match the snow-sheds of the 
Central, while the great tunnel of the latter is rivalled by 
the Tehacape Pass on its sister road. In this pass the 
height to be overcome is so great that eight miles of track 
were laid down in order to attain a distance forward of one 
and a half miles. Once-and-a-half around the hill the 
track curls its iron lariat-loops, then doubles on itself like 
a closely pursued hare, and for a space runs straight 
backward toward its starting-point — a most cunning piece 
of engineering audacity. 

There is nothing in the history of the two other trans- 
continental railroads that calls for notice in such a work 
as this. The history of the Northern Pacific has been writ- 
ten by Mr. E. V. Sraalley; the Canadian Pacific is still 
unfinished. On March 8, 1884, was driven the last spike 
in the Mexican Central railroad, uniting the ancient capi- 
tal of the Aztecs to New York and Boston by a continuous 
line of steel rails. '^ Viva la Republica de Mexico!''' cried 



74 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the American Consul, as the pilots of the locomotives 
touched; and '^ Viva los Estados Unidos del Norte 1^'' cried 
a citizen of Mexico, while the crowd rent the air with 
responsive shouts of "Fim." A significant ceremony, cele- 
brating an enterprise that portends great changes in 
Mexico, and changes undoubtedly for the better! 

Among scenic mountain roads the Denver and Rio 
Grande holds a supreme place in America. It is also a 
marvellous piece of engineering work. The construction 
of the road was undertaken in 1870, by Mr. W. J. Palmer 
and others, the three-foot gauge being adopted as one better 
fitted for mountain curves than the ordinary wider gauge. 
The road may be called an Iron Poem, of that stern mascu- 
line sort that our Western men compose, uttering itself 
in reverberated thunder up there amongst the clouds and 
whirling snow of the summit of the world: a stitch stoutly 
sewed into the green kirtle of the West; a bold challenge 
of Pate ; a bearding of the earth-giants ( how nimbly the 
little black steam-mice run over their faces as they sleep!); 
a road of weird canons, of snowy summits old in story, of 
" tumbled rock-piles grim and red," 

These reckless, heaven-ambitious peaks, 

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness. 

These formless wild arrays. — Whitman. 

Here, west of Pueblo, is the Grand Canon of the Arkan- 
sas, its Eoyal Gorge, a sort of Symplegades, or colossal 
gatewaj^ with towering walls of gloom. The skull of the 
J5tun cloven; beneath, the green ichor of the rushing 
river; aloft, sheer walls of granite, half a mile in height; 
the span only thirty feet; far up, a light canopy of blue; 
no bird, no grass, no tree, no sound but the roar of the 
stream or the thunder of the train over its clifif-bolted, 



THE BAISTDING OF THE CONTINENT. 75 

hanging bridge; while streamlets of sweet water trickle 
down the seamed walls, and fall unheeded into the foaming 
torrent. Elsewhere on the road you have the Black Canon 
of the Gunnison, with its flashing cascades, cliffs, pinnacles, 
towers, and cloves, and its strange mountain-cone of red 
sandstone, the Currecanti Needle. And there are the roan- 
colored mountains ("Book Mountains") lifting their vast 
leaves into the air; and Castle Gate towers aloft with its. 
posts of red sandstone five hundred feet in sheer height. 
Then through the Wahsatch Mountains you go down to the 
Salt Lake and the City of the Saints. 

Such are some of the wonders of the railways of the trans- 
Mississippi country. Chicago is not only the great railroad 
centre of this region; it is the greatest railroad centre in 
the world. The National Exposition of Railway Appliances 
held there in May and June, 1883, brilliantly focussed the 
railway life and activity of the whole country. It was 
held in the Inter-State Exposition Buildings fronting on 
Lake Michigan, and covered an area of eleven acres. At 
night that Aladdin genie, Electricity, flashed out his terri- 
ble sun-white eyes in a thousand places at once, lighting up 
weirdly the jets of water, the tropical palms, and the pol- 
ished steel and golden brass of objects displayed in evei-y 
variety of fanciful attitude. Around the main gallery ran 
eveiy day and hour the cars of the electric railwa)^* the 
baby-rival of steam, and perhaps destined to supplant it in 
the future. Snow-ploughs, monster locomotives, shops in full 
blast, model depots, a chime-whistle, game and fish and 
grain from the North, safety signal-devices, and an " Old 
Curiosity Shop," containing the first locomotives used in 
the world, were some of the tempting baits held out by the 

* Described in Chapter IX. 



76 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

managers of tlie exhibition. A huge locomotive made for 
steep-grade Avork on the Southern Pacific was the object of 
general admiration. The engine weighs sixty tons, is sixty 
feet long, and has two sets of cylinders and steam-chests. 
The quaint early locomotives excited as keen an interest as 
do the old iron-hooped cannon of leather and wood, used at 
the battle of Crecy, for the one are as antique in appearance 
as the other. There was George Stephenson's *' Puffing 
Billy," the veritable engine, the first ever run on the Stock- 
ton and Darlington railway, and loaned to the Exposi'tion 
by the Northeastern Railway Company of England. Then 
there was the first Canadian locomotive, the " Sampson," 
brought over from Durham in 1838, by George Dav- 
idson, for use in a Nova Scotia coal mine. And, finally, 
there was on exhibition the "Arabian, No. 1," built by 
Phineas Davis in 1834, for the Baltimore and Ohio rail- 







■XF3S 



(By courtesy of the ** Railway Age.") 
THE ''ARABIAN. 



THE BAlfDIlS'G OF THE CONTHSTENT. 77 

road, and having the fire-box where the pilot of modern 
engines is placed. This old relic was subsequently destroyed 
by fire at the Pittsburgh Exposition of 1883, to the great sor- 
row of antiquaries. Among the " Old Guard " of engineers 
present at Chicago were Horatio Allen, David Matthews 
(said to be the inventor of the spark-arrester, sectional 
chimne}^, hand-car, axle-box, and snow-plough, as well as 
originator of the plan of heating water in the tank of loco- 
motives by means of steam-pipes, and of the device of using 
sand on the rails) ; Joseph Whitehead, first fireman on the 
Stockton and Darlington road " in the days " (as he said ) 
"when a strong head-wind used to bring the locomotives to 
a stop;" and, last of all, old Tom Galloway, who for over 
half a century has been a locomotive engineer on the Balti- 
more and Oiiio railroad, has travelled in all more than one 
million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand, seven 
hundred and ninety-six miles, never has had an accident 
worth mentioning, and is still as hale and hearty as a 
mountaineer.* 

There is much that is picturesque and startling in the 
railway life of the Great West. The construction of the 
roads has always been attended by blood-shedding, and des- 
perate adventures of highway robbers and cut-throats. Nor 
was it a particularly enjoyable thing first to survey a rail- 
road and then construct it, and run the first trains through 
a region infested with hostile savages. The following inci- 
dent will suffice for many similar ones that might be nar- 

* A full account of the Railway Exposition of 1883 may be found in the con- 
temporaneous issues of the "Railway Age," of Chicago, edited by Mr. E H. 
Talbott, to whose energy, as well as that of Mr. J. McGregor Adams, much of 
the success of the Exposition was due. It was Mr. Talbott who first broached 
the idea of the undertaking in his journal. A pretty good critical account of 
the various appliances exhibited may be found in the first numbers of "Sci- 
ence," edited at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Mr. Samuel H. Scudder. 



78 WOISTDEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

rated of the Indians and their attacks upon railroad 
trains : 

On the 30th of October, 1868, as a freight train on the 
Union Pacific railroad was steaming leisurely along, about 
two miles west of Alkali Station, a point was reached 
where the ties had been cut in the middle, thus spreading 
the rails. The locomotive was immediately derailed, and 
the cars completely wrecked, while out of the prairie grass 
on either side, a force of about one thousand Sioux and 
Cheyennes suddenly rose up in the darkness, uttering ter- 
rific yells. One of the firemen was jammed in between the 
tender and locomotive, and for three hours suffered such 
horrible tortures that he implored the engineer to put him 
out of his misery. All the brakemen fled at the first alarm, 
but the engineer refused to leave his fireman, whom he was 
trying to extricate. The Indians next burned the railroad 
bridge in the rear, for the purpose of wrecking the passen- 
ger train which was to follow. But a division superinten- 
dent who had come down to the wreck from Alkali Station 
on a locomotive, and fought his way through a large force 
of Indians, got to a telegraph station further on in time to 
warn the approaching train. The superintendent also tel- 
egraphed to Fort Sedgwick for troops; but before the cav- 
alry arrived the savages had fied. 

But not all the Indians have proved dangerous to the 
railroads. Many of them have actually become converted 
into " paddies," working even better than the Chinese, and 
with as much nonchalance and ease. The Minneapolis and 
Omaha railroad employs from fifty to a hundred Winne- 
bagoes and Omahas as section hands, and is very well sat- 
isfied with their labor. 

An amusing Indian story is told of a young man from 



THE BAN'DIlSrG OF THE CONTINENT. 79 

the East who was once in charge of a locomotive on the 
construction line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa F^ 
road, below San Marcial. One day the young engineer 
was ordered to side-track his engine at Gramme, and wait 
for the passage of a certain construction-train. Now he 
had devoured with eager and trembling apprehension the 
numerous stories of Indian depredations that were afloat, 
and while waiting on his siding kept a sharp lookout for 
the dreadful savages. His vigilance was soon repaid, for 
at last he beheld a party of Indians well armed and-riding 
rapidly towai'd him. To leap from his lookout on the 
tender into the cab of the engine was but the work of a 
second. He grasped the throttle-valve and shrieked to the 
fireman, "Here they come! fill her up!" The fireman 
was startled by the wild expression on the " tenderfoot's " 
face, and began shovelling in the fuel. As they bowled 
rapidly away from the dangerous spot the engineer was 
congratulating himself a thousand times on his easy escape, 
when, suddenly, on turning a curve, his engine collided 
with that of the construction-train, all thought of which 
had been frightened out of his mind. It turned out that 
the supposed Indians were, in all probability, Mexicans 
coming to the place for water. The "tenderfoot" en- 
gineer is thought to have returned east, a sadder but a 
wiser man. 

Forest and prairie fires in the trans-Mississippi and 
northern Michigan regions are dangers to be dreaded by 
train men. The injury done to forests by sparks from 
passing locomotives is sometimes vengefully repaid with 
interest by a furious confiagration which sweeps down 
upon and devours the train of cars attempting to rush 
through it. The roar of the fire-tempest among the trees 



80 WOKDEES AlfD CUEIOSITIBS OF THE EAILWAY. 

is described as .resembling that of an approaching tornado, 
and the detonations of the white-meated hickories sound 
like the cracking of a giant's whip. This is accompanied by 
a hissing like the sound of frying salt, as the green foliage 
of the pines is swept away in a white flash of flame, while 
every few seconds a heavy thunder-crash announces that 
some forest giant has measured his length across the fiery 
bed. Trains of cars often succeed in runninsf the gauntlet 
at full speed, and with wetted roofs; but when they emerge 
they are generally on fire in several places, and the paint 
of all the woodwork is cracked and peeled by the heat. 

Terrific tornadoes, hail-storms, and water-spouts con- 
stitute still greater danger to the navigator of the " iron 
rivers" that span the western plains. At Kiowa, Kansas, 
in the year 1878, a locomotive was swept from a rail- 
road embankment by a water-spout, and lost in a quick- 
sand; it has never been found. In the summer of 1880, 
the town of Monotony, on the Kansas Pacific railroad, was 
visited by a terrible thunder-storm and water-spout; over 
six thousand feet of track were washed away, and the 
prairie lay eight feet under water. During the occurrence 
of this storm an entire freight-train was lost. It has never 
been found, — not a trace of it, — although the owners 
spent two thousand five hundred dollars in the search. It 
is supposed that the train was swept away and buried 
under a land-slip. This is surely one of the strangest 
mishaps ever chronicled I Some future geologist may have 
a treasure-trove in this buried train, or in its impression 
on the rock. 

The reader will be interested in an account of a won- 
derful hail-storm encountered by a train of cars in Colo- 
rado: 



THE BAlfDIlSrG OF THE CONTINENT. 81 

At Potter Station, on the Union Pacific railroad, in 
the autumn of 1875, a train was just pulling out from the 
depot, when a storm began, and in ten seconds there was 
such a fury of hail and wind that the engineer deemed 
it best to stop the locomotive. The hail-stones were 
simply great chunks of ice, many of them three or four 
inches in diameter, and of all shapes, — squares, cones, 
cubes, etc. The first stone that struck the train broke a 
window, and the flying glass severely injured a lady on the 
face. Five minutes afterward there was not a whole light 
of glass on the south side of the train. The Avindows in the 
Pullman cars were of French plate, three-eighths of an 
inch thick, and double. The hail broke both thicknesses 
and tore the curtains into shreds. The wooden shutters, 
too, were smashed, and many of the mirrors were broken. 
The deck-lights on the top of the cars were also demol- 
ished. The dome of the engine was dented as if it had 
been pounded with a heavy weight, and the wood-work 
on the south side of the cars was ploughed as if some one 
had struck it all over with sliding blows from a hammer. 
During the continuance of this terrific fusillade (a period 
of twenty minutes), the excitement and fear among some 
of the passengers ran high. Several ladies fainted, and 
the wife of the superintendent of the Mountain Division 
of the road went into spasms, from which she did not 
recover for over an hour after the cessation of the storm. 
Several persons sitting on the south side of the cars were 
more or less injured about the head and face. As soon as 
tbe storm abated a little, the matting from the car floors 
was hung up against the windows, and the train moved 
on, the wheels crunching through hail-stones drifted so 
deep as to impede progress for some miles. At the next 
6 



83 WONDEES ANT) CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

station strips of tin were procui'ed and fastened over the 
windows of the cars.* 

The gigantic snow-ploughs f of the western railroads 
afford, when in operation, a very inspiriting winter spec- 
tacle. They sometimes weigh as much as fifty tons. One, 
owned by the Chicago, Eock Island and Pacific railroad, 
is stationed, when in use, in front of a car of immense 
strength; the iron shares resemble the ram of a war- 
vessel ; the plough is hung on linked timbers attached to the 
car behind, and is raised or lowered from the car-platform 
by means of lever-screws; behind the plough are two heavy 
track-scrapers manipulated by men housed within a win- 
dowed cab, which also contains a stock of the various tools 
needed to clear a ti'ack in time of snow-drifts. At the 
Chicago Exposition was shown a huge plough, consisting of 
a great metal screw working inside an iron box. On the 
Toronto, Grey and Bruce railroad this novel snow-plough 
opened a channel through a cut one hundred and fifty feet 
long, filled with packed ice and snow, the screw hurling 
the heavy masses to a distance of sixty feet on either side. 

Sometimes on the Union Pacific a plough is driven by 
three, six, or even fourteen engines. It is a magnificent 
spectacle — this battle-charge of the locomotives. How the 
earth trembles and reels as with screeching of whistles and 
level-streaming plumes of steam, the solid line of engines 

*The Denver "News." 

+ The first successful snow-plough was constructed in 1836 for the Utica and 
Schenectady railroad ; drawings and models of it were obtained by the govern- 
ments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Previous to this but few efforts had 
been made to keep the tracks clear of snow, and, as a consequence, traffic was 
almost entirely suspended during the winter months. One early effort to 
clear the track was made by attaching brooms to a rude car-truck, which was 
pushed along from behind by horses, while the iron horse remained snugly 
under cover. Compare what is said in Chapter II about the rude snow-scraper 
used on the Quincy railroad. 



THE BANDING OF THE CONTINENT. 83 

rushes onward and hurls the enormous ram i^:ito the mass of 
ice and snow! Perhaps at first the stubborn compound 
budges not a foot. Then back, and at it again, and again, 
and again — until at last, it is done! The mighty avalanche 
is torn into fragments, and right onward dash the victo- 
rious engines with impetuous speed, throwing up a cloud of 
snow ten feet above their smoke-stacks, and never stopping 
until they have cut a half-mile path as clean as a sharp 
knife cuts a honey-comb, — while perchance the belated 
passengers send up cheer after cheer, and wave their hand- 
kerchiefs with delight as they witness the thrilling spec- 
tacle.* 

There have been several instances of whole trains lost in 
the snow-storms of the prairies. In December, 1872, some 
three hundred and fifty passengers occupying several trains 
on the Union Pacific road were snow-bound for two weeks, 
between Percy and Cheyenne — a distance of only one hun- 
dred and fifty miles. Tremendous gales had swept the snow 
into the ravines and excavations of the railroad; snow- 
ploughs continually ran off the track, and, in short, proved 
themselves insufficient to cope with the violent gusts of 
wind and the rapidly drifting snow. The trains had an 
abundant supply of coal, wood and water, and the railroad 
company had with wise foresight attached to each train 
before starting, special cars supplied with fuel, lights and 
blankets; but food was extremely hard to get. Those who 
had brought their baskets of delicacies with them had to 
meet the problem of making five days' supply stretch ovfer 
twenty days. The restaurants at neighboring stations were 
speedily bought out by the railroad officials, who were com- 
pelled to feed the passengers of one train on halibut and 

* From the account of an eye-witness. 



84 WONDERS AND CUKIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

crackers, while others got black coifee and bread, and occa- 
sionally some lucky one procured an elk or antelope steak. 
Whist-parties and story-telling helped pass the time away, 
and two highly successful balls were held in the back room 
of a grocery store, the music being furnished by a guitar, a 
mouth harmonicon, and a fine-tooth-comb! 

At six o'clock on the morning of New Year's Day, 1864, 
a train on the Michigan Central railroad, after having got 
about seven miles out on the prairies from Chicago, plunged 
into an immense snow-drift lying directly across the track. 
At first the powerful engine pushed right on, scattering the 
snow in glittering clouds to the right and the left, and 
seeming as if it would pull through victoriously. But soon 
it moved with great difficulty, and at last, after long labor 
and struggle, stopped short, unable to gain another foot of 
headway. There were a hundred persons in the train, 
many of them women and children; they had with them 
nothing but light lunches, and many had not even a cracker. 
As the day wore on they tore up the neighboring feiiCes for 
fuel for the stoves; but the dry wood aided by the gale soon 
heated stove and pipe red-hot, and set the car- roof on fire. 
With great difiiculty this was extinguished; but the car was 
now uninhabitable, and the passengers were all huddled 
together in the remaining car. It was now two o'clock in 
the afternoon, and the possibility of a terrible death began 
to haunt the minds of the snow-bound travellers, when 
(most welcome sight!) a passenger train on the Michigan 
Southern line appeared at a crossing some four hundred 
yards off. It was hailed, and the work of transferring pas- 
sengers began. The drift was ten feet deep, the storm at 
its height, and the cold so intense that tjie faces of the 
women and children were frozen almost as soon as they 



THE BANDING OF THE CONTINENT. 85 

came in contact with the wind, " turning white almost as 
quickly as if they had been plunged in boiling water." 
Almost everybody was badly frost-bitten. The new train 
was itself sixteen hours behind time. Some wedding cake 
discovered in the cars was confiscated to the necessities of 
the occasion, and the train, starting afresh with its double 
load, was soon effectually buried in a drift, the wheels 
clogged with snow, and the engine frozen up. The night 
was coming on, and something must be done. Two strong 
men volunteered to try to reach the city, and did so, after 
undergoing great toil and danger. They gave the alarm, 
and sleighs started out loaded with blankets and provisions ; 
but only two of them succeeded in getting to the train. 
Having unloaded, the drivers siftirted at eight o'clock at 
night to return in the sleighs, with some of the jjassengers. 
However, after travelling for a short time, they became 
conscious that they were lost in an illimitable labyrinth of 
snow-drifts running in every direction over the prairie. In 
the gloom of the night the presence of a drift would not be 
discovered until the horses were plunging and struggling in 
it up to their sides; both sleighs were overturned several 
times, and frequently the occupants, both men and women, 
were compelled to get out in the deep drifts while the teams 
were being extricated. Finally, one of the vehicles broke 
down entirely, and the men were forced to trudge along on 
foot in snow up to their waists. About half past ten 
o'clock they saw a light; it was found to proceed from the 
house of a hospitable German, who received them for the 
night. In the morning they found that they were only half 
a mile from the train. As for the people in the cars, the 
beacon-lanterik they had hung out had happily served to 
indicate their whereabouts to the agent of the railroad 



86 WOISTDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

company, wlio reached them about ten o'clock p.m., with 
more blankets and provisions. The passengers accordingly 
passed a tolerable night, and next morning were brought 
back to the city in sleighs. 

Another still more curious instance occurred in 1880, in 
New Jerse}'", where a train mysteriously disappeared in a 
snow-storm, and was not found for two days. The story 
runs as follows: One day in the last week in December, a 
passenger train started at three o'clock p.m. from Penn's 
Grove, on the Delaware Eiver railway, its destination 
being Woodbury, New Jersey, twenty miles distant. When 
half the way had been made, huge snow-drifts were encoun- 
tered, " against which the locomotive bravely and fiercely 
butted, plowing its way through light drifts which some- 
times reached to the top of the smoke-stack." Still not 
much headway was gained, and the coal on the tender was 
being rapidly consumed, — when communication was opened 
with the president of the road. This gentleman sent to the 
conductor the following plucky despatch: "Use all the 
fence-rails you can lay your hands on, if your coal gives 
out. Throw in a barn or two, if necessar3^ If that fails, 
take all the pork offered at six dollars per hundred. Keep 
your steam up, and come through at any cost." Instruc- 
tions were obeyed, and Woodbury was reached at ten p.m., 
a funeral cortege having been waiting for the train there 
since five o'clock. The road having been opened, it was 
determined to try to keep it so, and the train started back 
at midnight. At two o'clock it stuck in a drift; telegraph 
wire blown down; conductor sends messenger across the 
fields with despatch asking for another engine; but he for- 
got to state where he could be found, and the powerful 
engine that was sent out got lost too. In fine, both train 



THE BAISTDHSTG OP THE CONTINENT. 87 

and relief-engine were lost sight of for many hours, and 
were finally discovered by sleighs sent out to search for 
them. 

During the tremendous snow-storm of January 18 and 
19, 1881, in Great Britain, trains in every part of the 
kingdom were blocked up or snowed under. A hearse 
carrying a body to be buried was itself buried in a white 
shroud of snow; a man and cart were buried alive, and a 
train of ten cars was blockaded in a cutting between 
the towns of Moulsford and Goring, and actually snowed 
under, so that only the funnel of the locomotive was vis- 
ible; the passengers had been previously removed. 

On the evening of December 6, 1882, a train on the 
little Festiniog mountain road, in Great Britain, was lost 
in the snow. It seems that as the dusk of evening came 
on, the train had come to a stand still and large quantities 
of snow were blown over it, extinguishing the engine's 
fires. The snow drifted in some places to a depth of 
twenty feet, and. thirty-six hours passed before a relief 
force of two hundred men, with shovels and snow-ploughs, 
were able to dig out passengers and cars from their wintry 
burrow. 

One other point must be mentioned in connection with 
western trunk-lines, and that is the matter of standards 
of time. This is a topic that could only arise for discussion 
in a country having very long east and west distances 
within its limits.* America is so vast that her railroads 
must gauge their operations by the movements of the 
globe itself. As the westward flying cars creep over the 
green curve of the earth, the passengers find the sun 

* In England there is no such thing as local time. The standard is Green- 
wich, and all clocks conform to it. 



88 WON'DERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

rising later and later every morning, by the time of their 
watches. This fact, taken in connection with the contin- 
ually varying standards of railroad time, becomes very 
annoying, especially to constant travellers. Until the re- 
cent Time-table Convention, in Chicago (October 11, 1883), 
there wei'e fifty-three different standards of time in use by 
the various railroads. These standards differed from each 
other by all sorts of odd minutes, and the points on east 
and west lines where one standard was changed for an- 
other, were almost numberless. At the Convention alluded 
to, an admirable system, devised by Mr. W. P. Allen, was 
adopted by the representatives of seventy-eight thousand 
miles of railroads, and it is now used by all the railroads of 
the United States and Canada. It is spoken of as the " Hour 
System," for it divides the whole country into four great 
sections, separated from each other by north and south 
running lines, or degrees of longitude, which are just one 
hour, or fifteen degrees apart. The roads lying chiefly in 
any one section adopt the time of that section, and over 
eighty per cent of them now use two standards instead of 
forty. Formerly, in travelling from Boston to Washington,, 
one had to make use of six standards of time, — in other 
words, set one's watch six different times if one wished to 
be prompt in catching trains. Similarly, the fourteen rail- 
roads centring in St. Louis happened to use six different 
standards. Now, by the new system, there is but one time 
for all railways on the Atlantic coast, one time for those in 
the interior, etc. More explicitly, the sections are called 
the "Eastern," the "Central," the "Mountain," and the 
" Western," — with an extra section added for the benefit 
of a few Canadian roads, such as the Intercolonial. In the 
Canadian section, time is that of the sixtieth meridian west 



THE BANDING OF THE CONTINENT. 89 

from Greenwich; in the Eastern, the seventy-fifth meridian; 
in the Central, the ninetieth meridian; in the Mountain, the 
one hundred and fifth; and in the Western, the one hun- 
dred and twentieth. As the change from one standard to 
another is exactly one hour, it will be evident that in going 
west or east one's watch will not differ in the minutes, as 
one passes out of one section into another. For instance, if 
you start from Boston with the intention of calling in a 
couple of days, at quarter past ten a.m., on a friend in 
Buffalo, you will simply leave your watch as it is, and, 
guided by it, call at quarter past nine, allowing one hour's 
difference for change of longitude. 

In the new system the places where changes of stand- 
ards occur are large or well known cities. Up to April 
9, 1884, seventy-eight of these had adopted the standard 
time. The time fixed for the first change of clocks was Sun- 
day at noon, November 18, 1883. According to the official 
report of Mr. W. F. Allen, some fifty million people already 
use the new standard. It is evident that the employment 
of uniform time will be a great convenience to everybody 
concerned. For example, if all cities in the eastern time- 
section follow the example of the principal ones, the minute 
hands of all the public time-pieces in Canada, the Atlantic 
Coast States, and the Middle States will be brought into 
coincidence with each other and with railroad time, so that 
all clocks in this vast region will show twelve at the same 
instant. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE LOCOMOTIVE IN SLIPPERS, 

rr^HE railway system in the East, says a witty modern 
-*- traveller, has already become Orientalized, " It has 
already put itself into slippers, crossed its legs, shut its 
eyes, and ta.ken to the chibouque." And thank heaven 
that it has done so! Let us be grateful that the restless 
Saxon, even though he go to the East with a locomotive 
under each arm, can never de-Orientalize that land of 
poppies and dreams. We have no objection to urge when 
we read that the first locomotive was landed in 1864, at 
Ceylon, by means of a bamboo raft, and that it was drawn 
to the railroad by a team of three elephants; there is a 
certain piquant fitness in that. And we are resigned to 
the sleepy railroads of Egypt. But we do wince visibly 
when anybody mentions the railroad now in operation 
from Rome to Tivoli, past Hadrian's Villa, or speaks of the 
iron way from tlie Piraeus to the Acropolis, or shouts in 
our ear, "Change cars for Nazareth!"* There is some 
relief, however, in the fact that the Greek railroad, opened 
to travel in 1869, was discussed for thirteen years before 
it could be built, and that, although the Shah of Persia, in 
1873, after his visit to Europe, conceded to Russia and to 
Baron Renter the right to build each a railroad in the 

* A railroad route has been surveyed from Acre around the base of Carmel, 
across the plain of Jezreel, with a branch to Nazareth twelve miles in length, 
and down the valley of the Jordan to Jericho, with a branch to Bethlehem and 
Jerusalem. 

90 



THE LOCOMOTIVE IN SLIPPERS. 91 

land of roses and of wine, and although some miles of 
earthworks were actually thrown up at Kesht in Septem- 
ber, 1873, yet, after all, the Shah had the good taste to 
back out of the bargain, and revoke his concessions. If 
the locomotive must supplant the Jinnee in the East, let 
the conception be leisurely evolved out of the Oriental 
mind, and practically embodied in a genuine Oriental 
manner. 

So pleads the antiquarian in us. But when we see what 
the Saxon railroad is doing in Japan and India, we are 
forced to look at the subject in a different light. The 
reason then takes part against the fancy, and one is obliged 
to admit the desirability of the Western institution as a 
civilizing agent in Asia. 

It was a foregone conclusion that the Japanese would be 
the first to adopt the railroad. The first one in the Mikado's 
empire, "the Tokio and Yokohama, was built by the Eng- 
lish, and was opened with imposing ceremonies October 
14, 1872. " On that day," says Mr. Grifiis, " the sun rose 
cloudlessly on the Sunrise Land. Fuji blushed at dawn 
out of the roseate deeps t»f space, and on stainless blue 
printed its white magnificence all day long, and in the 
mystic twilight sunk in floods of golden splendor, resting at 
night with its head among the stars. On that auspicious 
day, the Mikado, princes of the blood, court nobles, the 
flowery 'nobility' of ex-daimi5s, and guests representing the 
literature, science, art, and arms of Japan, in flowing pic- 
turesque costume; the foreign Diplomatic Corps, in tight 
cloth smeared with gold; the embassadors of Liu Kiu, the 
Aino chiefs, and officials in modern dress, made the proces- 
sion, that, underneath arches of camellias, azaleas, and 
chrysanthemums, moved into the stone-built dep6t, and, 



92 WOJS^DEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

before twenty thousand spectators, stepped into the train. 
It was a sublime moment, when, before that august array 
of rank and fame and myriads of his subjects, the one 
hundred and twenty-third representative of the imperial 
line declared the road open. The young emperor beheld 
with deep emotion the presence of so many human beings. 
As the train moved, the weird strains of the national hymn 
of Japan, first heard before the Roman empire fell or Char- 
lemagne ruled, were played. Empires had risen, flourished 
and passed away since those sounds were first attuned. To- 
day Japan, fresh and vigorous, with new blood in her 
heart, was taking an upward step in life." 

Another railroad line runs from Osaka in Niphon to the 
port of Kobe. It has three or more tunnels, and huge ter- 
minal yards. The engineers are English and Scotch, but 
the subordinate offices are filled by the natives. This is true 
also of the Yokohama road, where the guards, or brakemen, 
are mostly "Samourai" — men of good birth — and, dressed 
in the most approved uniform, perform all the duties of 
their road in a very satisfactory manner, and have learned 
to jump in and out of trains while in motion quite as well 
as Ameiican brakemen. An English traveller speaks of 
the guard on one of the trains as blowing his whistle and 
waving his signal for departure, to the grave spectacled 
engineer, with as much self-importance as though ordering 
a cavalry brigade to the charge. The natives always take 
off their clogs on the platform and carry them inside the 
cars in their hands. It is said to be amusing to see how, 
when travelling, the 5^oung Japanese swells try to assume 
an air of nonchalance, as if they had been used to railroads 
all their life. The cars are of American pattern, with cen- 
tral aisle. The Japanese take wonderfully to travel by 



THE LOCOMOTIVE IJST SLIPPEES. 93 

steam. They scorn a jinriksha when they can ride behind 
the iron steed. Every train is crowded, especially on Sun- 
days, and pilgrims bound for the capital from Mount Fuji 
or Oyama hail with joy the foreign engine and train wait- 
ing for them at Kanagawa, for the railroad saves them 
many a weary day's travelling, and much cash besides. The 
Japanese take great delight in the rapid movement of the 
train, and although the novelty has now worn off, there 
are still many who travel over the road solely for the 
sake of the agreeable sensations experienced. There is, as 
yet, only one American-built railroad in the empire, the 
road from Otarunai Harbor at Yezo, to the Paroni coal 
fields. 

The first and only railroad in China had an existence of 
twelve months. It was built by Messrs. Jardine, Matheson 
and Company, of Shanghai, and extended from that city to 
Woosung, a few miles distant. The company could procure 
no compulsory power, and had to spend a great deal of 
money in the purchase of land and graves. The great ob- 
jection brought against the enterprise by the Chinese was 
that it would depreciate the value of property in its neigh- 
borhood, and disturb the spirits of the earth and air. But, 
as a matter of fact, property along the line increased in 
value from the very first day (February 14, 1876) that the 
little engine drew a train of cars. Thousands flocked to see 
the construction and the subsequent operation of the road. 
It was fairly blocked with traffic, and was worked at a 
profit for one year, when, by the advice of the "statesman " 
Li Hung Chang, the Chinese government bought out the 
concern, and packed off the plant and rolling stock to For- 
mosa, the Governor of which. Ting Futai, had a great 
desire to possess a railroad. But as no engineers went 



94 WONDEES AI^D CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

with the material, it was landed on the coast in such a 
damaged condition as to be useless to the natives, even if 
they had known how to employ it. 

In India the days of the palankeen and cooly, the bul- 
lock-cart and pony-post have long been numbered. In 1854 
thirty-seven miles of railroad were opened between Cal- 
cutta and Pundoah, and since that time thousands of miles 
have been built, and the whole northern part of the penin- 
sula is now netted with railways. It is recorded that an 
elephant once charged upon a locomotive while it was draw- 
ing a train of cars. The result was very bad for the 
elephant, as George Stephenson would have said. The 
animal apparently recognized in the iron mammoth the 
creature that was to supplant himself as a beast of burden; 
but his defeat was significant and ominous. The elephant, 
it is to be feared, is doomed in India. 

The stations are strongly built, generally in the Swiss 
style, and by a wise foresight are made strong enough to 
serve as a cordon of military posts in case of another native 
insurrection, like that of the famous Sepoy rebellion. In 
some few cases, stations are only native bungalows, with 
picturesque thatched roof. At first, telegraph lines were 
supported on palm trunks, and when these took root and 
persisted in putting forth their feathery foliage at the top, 
they looked very pretty. But the wind and the rain played 
havoc with them, and so did the natives who kept climbing 
up to whisper messages to the mysterious singing wire! So 
also did the white ants prove destructive, and now posts of 
wood are supplanted by columns of solid masonry. The 
East Indian railroad, from Calcutta to Benares, might be 
called the brick and iron road. For in order to guard 
against the ravages of fire and insects, the ties, the car- 



• THE LOCOMOTIVE IN SLIPPERS. 95 

roofs, and the telegraph poles are of iron,* while track-bal- 
last, stations, fences, and house-roofs are of brick. 

As a matter of course the cars are well ventilated, ai^d 
the conductors rejoice in white jackets and tall pith helmets. 
On the long trunk lines, such as that between Calcutta and 
Madras, the first-class cars, which are the only ones that well- 
to-do foreigners ever travel in, are so made that they can 
be converted into sleeping cars. Each car contains two 
compartments, and each compartment has a cushioned settee 
down either side, with a third crosswise along one end; the 
other end is occupied by a washing closet with shower-bath. 
Gentlemen always carry with them a counterpane padded 
with wool, and a small pillow or two. At night the settee 
is converted into a sleeping berth by the aid of the counter- 
pane and pillows. At daybreak the train stops to allow 
passengers time to eat the chota-hazare^ or early breakfast, 
and inhale the cool, dewy air before the intolerable heat 
begins. Etiquette permits ladies and gentlemen to appear 
during this meal in the light sleeping costume always worn 
by through travellers. After the early breakfast comes the 
bath, dressing, and reading of the novel or newspaper. 
Native gentlemen used to travel first-class, but they made 
themselves such a nuisance to the English lady passengers 
by chewing pan, smoking their hookahs, and removing their 
clothing above their waists, that they were quarrelled with 
by English gentlemen, and soon by tacit agreement they 
learned to take the second-class cars, where they make 
themselves disagreeable to English clerks and soldiers only. 

It is the native traveller, however, who offers the most 
curious study to the stranger. Natives in immense num- 

* For a similar reason the engineer of the San Panlo railroad in Brazil has 
made use of discarded iron rails for telegraph poles. 



96 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

bers use the railroad, and almost all travel third or fourth- 
class. Undoubtedly the railroads of India are invaluable as 
helping to mitigate the horrors of famine; but a still 
greater boon conferred by them is the influence they exert 
in the obliteration of caste. The native brahmin, or high- 
caste man must travel, and as a rule, he has not money 
enough to pay for any but a third or fourth-class ticket. 
But in a car where human beings are packed together like 
animals, the caste-prejudices of the native have to be kept 
in the background. Hence it is that in India the division- 
lines of caste begin to be less strongly marked. 

The scenes enacted at the more frequented railway sta- 
tions of India remind one of the embarkation of our plan- 
tation negroes upon the southern river-steamboats. The 
swart Hindoos arrive at the station four or five hours 
before the starting of the train. They are always accom- 
panied to the depot by friends, or dependants, numbering 
from two hundred to three hundred, and the peasant, if his 
stay abroad is to be for a week or so, often fetches along a 
bag of rice, one of flour, a supply of ghee (or clarified but- 
ter), and a small donkey-load of sugar-cane; for he has heard 
that provisions are dear where he is going, and he chuckles 
at his foresight in taking his supplies with him. But the 
poor fellow finds at the last moment that the freight charges 
are such as to turn the scales the other way; he cannot, 
however, throw away his provisions, and so pays the bill 
with a heavy heart, and many groans and maledictions. 
There are often as many as one or two thousand natives 
at a station awaiting the arrival of a train. They are not 
admitted within doors until about an hour before the train 
starts. So they squat on their hams outside in the sun, 
chewing sugar-cane, eating sweatmeats, and chatting with 



THE LOCOMOTIVE IK SLIPPERS. 97 

those who have come to see them off. The npise, confusion, 
and stench are something wonderful. When the ticket- 
office is opened tlie clatter of voices rises into a wild 
uproar as the crowd rushes in, each man fighting his way 
forward as best he can. When a native from the back 
country presents himself at the ticket-window he is told that 
his fare to such a place is, say one rupee six annas. Now 
he has all his life been accustomed to have one price asked 
him, and to pay another, and the state of mind of the 
English official may be imagined when he is asked if he 
will not take one rupee two annas for the ticket. If the 
native does not come instantly to terms he gets a rap from 
the stick of the policeman who stands near by in order to 
expedite matters. The Hindoo next rushes to the freight 
agent to get his baggage weighed; and there again he tries 
to beat down the price asked. In the mean time the train 
has arrived, and is now I'eady to start. But the locomo- 
tive whistles and the station-bell rings in vain; only one- 
half of the crowd is yet aboard. If one of them wishes to 
find a friend in the crowd he raises so terrific a yell for 
him — calling him by name — that the sound drowns even 
the locomotive whistle. It is usually half an hour after 
the advertised time before the last man is in his place and 
the train moves off. There are no seats in the cars occu- 
pied by the natives; they all squat on the floor, first strip- 
ping themselves to the waist. " The third and fourth-class 
cars," says an anonymous writer, " are one and all distin- 
guished by the quiet and the fragrance of a monkey-house, 
the roominess of a herring-barrel, and all the picturesque- 
ness derivable from an endless welter of bare brown arms 
and legs, shaven crowns, and shaggy black hair, white cloaks, 
red wrappers, blue or scarlet caps and turbans, grinning 



98 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

teeth, rolling black eyes, and sharp-pointed noses adorned 
with silver rings so huge that you feel tempted to seize 
them and give them a double knock, — all exhaling a min- 
gled perfume of cocoanut oil and overheated humanity 
sufficient to knock down a fireman." It must be noted 
that the Indian railway companies do not allow any rough 
treatment of the natives by officials, since the greater part 
of their income is derived from them. 

There are very few railroads in Africa. In 1880 a 
survey was made for a trans-Sahara railway. The prac- 
ticability of a route some two hundred kilometres south 
of El Golea was demonstrated. A reasonable amount of 
water and a good deal of vegetation was discovered. 
There is a railroad between Tunis and Goletta, the cars 
of which have covered balconies at the sides, where pas- 
sengers may sit in the shade, and enjoy the cool breeze 
and the prospect. In order to be convinced that the 
Oriental repose has not been destroyed by the railway, 
you have only to travel in Egypt over the road from 
Alexandria to Cairo. About the station every one moves 
slowly and gently, as if overpowered with drowsiness. 
There, in the luggage-department is a dark fellow with 
red fez who stalks about with nose in air, and pays 
no attention whatever to the clamors of the public for 
tickets and parcels; here are water-carriers, with their 
porous earthen jars; vendors of oranges and sugar-cane, 
and men and women selling curds, heads of lettuce, and 
coarse dark bread, all of which are eagerly purchased by 
the Egyptian passengers. While you are conversing with 
an English engineer, who, in a voice as hoarse as that 
of a stage-tyrant, informs you that he caught cold last 
week from being tipped, engine and all, into the Nile> 



THE LOCOMOTIVE lis" SLirPEES. 99 

owing to the submergence of an embankment — all at once 
a native employe rings a large dinner-bell, which he has 
been holding on his shoulder; a guard in red fez and red 
sash closes the car-door; "the blue gowns and bare feet, 
the water-jugs and palm-mats, and prayer-carpets, and tins, 
and brass waiters, are all stowed away," and without any 
whistling or puffing, the locomotive slides quietly out from 
the shadowy station into the intense white sunshine, and 
trundles sluggishly along over its elastic road-bed. 

Perhaps your travelling companion is some " imper- 
turbable old Turk in turned-up red slippers and a swelter- 
ing curry-powder-colored pelisse, with grizzly beard, and 
a huge sealing-wax-looking signet-ring, mounted in silver, 
on the rugose forefinger of his right hand. And, per- 
chance, in a wash-leather bag, in the breast-pocket of his 
third jacket, he may carry a large chased gold watch, to 
which he will occasionally apply his tawny old eyes." At 
all the way-stations you pass there is a great demand for 
water for the waghing of hands. After a time the train 
stops for dinner. An English traveller has thus described 
a dinner which he ate at a small Egyptian railway-station: 

" The dinner at the restaurant was very bad, and ludi- 
crously dear; beef ligneous in fibre, greasy swabs of cab- 
bages, dates thick with flies, were not redeemed by the 
neatness of the room or the care of the waiters. The 
place was an outhouse; the butcher, with a goat on his 
shoulders, bullied through us on the way to his slaughter- 
house; the dirty Arab servants bounced against each other 
as they ran about. The only redeeming point of the din- 
ner, — nay, its sweet crowning, — was the concluding dish, 
the mish-mish, a common, but great delicacy in Egypt. It 
consists of dried apricots, seasoned with scented little clubs 



100 WONDEES AKD CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

of cloves, and delicious little papyri rolls of Indian cinna- 
mon." And now, while the reader is smacking his lips 
over this toothsome dish, we must unceremoniously leave 
him, and leap at once from Africa into Europe, in order 
to prepare the next chapter, which is to deal with the 
peculiar features and picturesque incidents of Continental 
railway travel. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A MOSAIC OF TRAVEL. 

TT is doubtless largely owing to the vast distances 
-*- traversed, and to the comparatively undeveloped state 
of the country, that travel by rail in Russia so closely 
resembles that in the United States. It was not to be sup- 
posed that, living in a horribly cold climate, the Russians 
would deliberately adopt the English car, when they had 
before their eyes the warm, roomy, and elegant saloon-cars 
of America. On the contjrary, they have not only adopted 
our system, but they have surpassed it; and to-day, on 
such a road as the great line between St. Petersburg and 
Moscow, railway travel has apparently reached perfection, 
as far as respects luxurious appointments and furnishings. 
The saloon-cars are of great length (like our Wagner 
coaches). In the centre is a drawing-room, with tables, 
sofas, and divans. Opening from one side of this is a 
passage-way leading the entire length of the car to the 
iron platforms, which are inclosed with railings. The 
cars are heated by steam-pipes running from an upright 
boiler and furnace at one end. Pushing aside heavy cur- 
tains you behold three pleasant little private compart- 
ments, each containing six easy chairs (the fauteuil lit). 
The same car contains three similar compartments reserved 
for ladies. There is a light luggage-net for every trav- 
eller. A winding staircase leads to a second story or 
sleeping-saloon, affording from its windows a fine view of 

101 



102 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the country along the route. Over the passage-way is a 
long receptacle for bundles and portmanteaus. The cars 
have double windows and closely fitting doors; ai'e well 
ventilated through the roof, and are provided with hand- 
some toilet-rooms, portable card-tables, wax candles, chess, 
draughts, cards, and books. The train halts at convenient 
intervals, at stations with clean, wide platforms, and with 
refreshment-rooms the cheapest and best supplied in 
Europe. Everything is clean and bright in these restaur- 
ants, and the cheer furnished consists of tea, coffee, wines, 
liqueurs, beef, ducks, partridges, venison, sturgeon, ca- 
viare, etc., all served by polite and nimble waiters. Enough 
has been said, doubtless, to convince the American reader 
that travel in Russia does not now necessarily mean riding 
in an open sledge with the thermometer at thirty degrees 
below zero, and ^the cold wind curdling your blood and 
fumbling at your heart-strings, while the sleet creeps 
under your furs and pelts you in the face, and a pack of 
wolves is howling in your rear ready to devour both horse 
and man. On the contrary, the journey from Moscow to 
St. Petersburg is so comfortable a proceeding that many 
Russians of wealth (loungers and idlers) often travel back 
and forth between the two cities for the entertainment 
they receive in the cars and in the restaurants by the way. 
In the neighboring country of Scandinavia, the locomo- 
tive goes at a very leisurely pace; in other respects there 
is not much that calls for notice. In Norway the cars are 
of the English pattern, with doors opening at the sides, 
and a tank of drinking water is placed above the seats and 
between the two compartments of each car, with the 
refreshing block of ice visible through the glass side of 
the box or tank. 



A MOSAIC OF TRAVEL. 103 

In Sweden the railroads are government property; the 
road-beds are excellent, and the stations marvels of neat- 
ness. Paul Du Chaillu has v^ritten an agreeable account 
of a Swedish railway refreshment-room: "In the centre 
of a spacious room, the floor of which was spotless, was a 
large table covered with a snowy cloth, upon which was 
displayed a variety of tempting dishes, including large fish 
from the lakes, roast beef, lamb, chicken, soup, potatoes, 
and other fresh vegetables, different kinds of bread, pud- 
dings, jellies, sweet milk, cream, butter, cheese, and the 
never-failing butter-milk, which many ate first and before 
the soup. Every article of food was cooked to a turn, and 
the joints were hot, having just been taken off the fire. 
Piles of warm plates, with knives, forks, and napkins, lay 
ready to the traveller's hand; and the whole aspect of the 
place was tidy, cheerful, and appetizing; one might have 
fancied a banquet had been spread for a private party. 
The purveyors had been advised by telegraph of the exact 
time of our arrival, and, as the railway trains are punc- 
tual, unless delayed by sudden snow-storms or accidents, 
all was in readiness for us. I was much interested in 
observing the manners of the travellers; there was no 
confusion. The company walked around the central table, 
selected from the dishes they liked best, and then taking 
knives, forks, spoons, and napkins, seated themselves at the 
little marble tables scattered in the room, rising when they 
desired to help themselves again. I noticed particularly 
the moderation of the people; the portion of food each one 
took was not in excess of that which would have been served 
at a private table; and every person in the company 
seemed to remember that his neighbor also might fancy 
the dish of which he partook. The sale of ardent spirits 



104 WOFDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

in the railway stations being forbidden by the government, 
only beer or light wines could be procured, and these were 
served by alert and tidy young girls. From a large coffee- 
urn placed upon a table, the travellers helped themselves 
to that beverage ; milk was provided without charge. 

" The dinner concluded, and the given period of twenty 
minutes having expired, we stepped up to a desk to pay 
the reckoning, which was received by the girl§. The price 
charged for this excellent meal was thirty-two cents; an 
additional sum of six cents was charged for the bottled 
beer. I observed that the word of each guest was taken 
without question as to the quantity of wine, beer, or coffee 
he had consumed, and no one was at the door to watch 
the people going out." 

As one might expect, railway travel in Germany is very 
slow, very uncomfortable, but very safe. The charters of 
most of the railroads were granted under the condition that 
at the end of thirty years the government might exercise the 
right of purchasing and operating them. The majority of 
them have already come into the hands of the government, 
and it is the policy of Bismarck to get them all into the 
control of the executive power. There are advantages in 
having the strong restraining hand of government on the 
railways. One of these advantages is the thorough and 
permanent construction of road beds. It is astonishing 
but true that in Germany not a single accident has ever 
occurred from the hreaking of a rail, for the government 
compels the companies to replace their rails at the end of a 
period scientifically calculated to be the limit of safety for 
rails subjected to the jar of moving trains. 

There are no sleeping cars in the " Fatherland," and all 
the cars ai'e smoking-cars — except those reserved for ladies. 



A MOSAIC OF TKAVEL. 105 

It is vain to think that you can escape the pipe in German 
trains, unless you hire a whole car. At the stations, first, 
second, and third-class passengers are assigned separate 
waiting-rooms, and are penned up in these until two or 
three minutes before the train starts, when the doors are 
unbolted, and a rush is made for seats. The cars open at 
the sides and are divided into from five to eight compart- 
ments. The head-conductor and the sub-conductors are of 
course uniformed. The conductor-in-chief, after collecting 
his fares by walking along the gang-plank at the side, 
retires to a little projecting watch-tower perched on the 
end of the coach. No drinking water is provided ; if there 
is a retiring-closet it is placed in the baggage-car, and the 
key can be obtained of the conductor. As there are no 
central aisles through the German cars, the traveller is 
obliged to remain in the baggage-car until the next station 
is reached, when the key is returned to the conductor ! The 
cars on some lines ai'e heated by a preparation of wood, 
charcoal, nitrate of potash, and starch, — all inclosed in an 
iron box placed under the seats. The prepared material 
comes in flat cakes, and eight of these cakes will warm a 
compartment for sixteen hours at a cost of sixteen cents. 
An American traveller who travelled from Cologne to 
Mainz by the " lightning express " says that the train moved 
at the tremendous rate of twenty miles an hour, and at each 
of the fifteen stopping places all the conductors and passen- 
gers alighted and walked leisurely to the nearest restaurant 
for beer, so that he calculated that it takes the average 
German five hours and fifteen beers to get from Cologne to 
Mainz. 

But, besides safety, there are other meliorations. Even 
fourth-class cars are reserved filr Damen (for ladies), and 



106 WON"DERS AN"D CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the third-class waiting rooms are (according to German 
taste at least) jovial and genial places, where everybody is 
smoking or drinking beer, and at a jolly buffet a flaxen- 
haired Teuton girl supplies you with two eggs, a jug of 
foaming beer, and a nice sandwich, and gives you back 
change out of threepence. On the railroad between 
Cologne and Berlin they have introduced the neat French 
custom of train-lunches. The train between the two cities 
stops nowhere longer than five minutes; so inquiry is made 
before the train starts as to who will dine at Frankfort, and 
when the train arrives at that city "waiters deposit trays in 
the cars according to the number indicated by slips stuck by 
the guard on the windows of each compartment. These 
trays are electroplate with a velveted support to rest them on 
the knees, and contain a whole assortment of covered elec- 
troplated dishes fitted into holes to keep them firm during 
the oscillation of the train. Removing the lids, the travel- 
ler finds a soup or bouillon in one, a cutlet with peas or 
beans in another, a fine cut of a joint with two vegetables 
in another, and some stewed strawberries in a fourth. Add 
a pint bottle of white wine, and such conveniences as a 
napkin, toothpick, and the usual condiments and bread, and 
even the stingiest traveller cannot begrudge the half-a- 
crown which is asked for this neat little entertainment." 
The tray is handed out at the next station, and the traveller 
composes himself comfortably to his book or his nap. 

Steam travel in Spain is a pretty rough experience. 
The luxuries of travel are not to be sought in that country. 
There are long and irritating delays, and at about every 
stopping place you are amused to see the leisurely fashion 
in which engineer, fireman, and conductors will roll up 
cigarettes and never start until the last puff has been 



A MOSAIC OF TKAVEL, 107 

drawn. But on every Spanish train there is a wagon reser- 
vado para Senoras; and at the stations the refreshing cry, 
Quien quiere agua? mingles with the voice of the vendor of 
cool, delicious grapes, oranges, and lemons. 

The English and the Americans find a good deal of fault 
with French travelling accommodations,* but there is much 
that is agreeable in the management of their railroads. 
The officials may ventilate the cars badly, furnish some poor 
ones, rob your luggage occasionally, keep back change, and 
furnish wretched sleeping cars; but then many of the cars 
are excellent, and are furnished with carpets and foot- warm- 
ers, the officials are courteous, and, above all, you are pro- 
vided with elegant and digestible lunches. Dickens, it will 
be remembered, in his " Mugby Junction," hits off with 
delicious satire the difference between the French and Eng- 
lish restaurants of his day. The English ones have im- 
proved since he wrote, and the French ones have not dete- 
riorated. The "Missis" of the "refreshment" room at 
Mugby thus imparts to her employes the results of her tour 
of observation in France: 

" ' Shall I be believed when I tell you that no sooner had 
I landed on that treacherous shore than I was ushered into 
a Refreshment Room where there were, I do not exaggerate, 
actually eatable things to eat?' 

" A groan burst from the ladies. 

* An Englishman, writing to the London "Times," growls about a French- 
man with whom he travelled, who smoked a nasty pipe, drank sour wine, and 
spat on the carpet of the car. But exceptions do not make the rule, and 
nobody doubts the superficial politeness, at least, of the Frenchman. English- 
men also complain of the red tape of the baggage room. They weigh your bag- 
gage, enter it in a book, and write the weight, destination, number, and charge 
for transportation on a slip of paper, which is handed to you. When you arrive 
at your destination you cannot get your luggage until trunks, bags, and boxes 
are all set out in order on long counters. 



108 WON"DEES AiTD CUIJIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAT. 

" ' Where there were not only eatable things to eat, but 
also drinkable things to drink.' 

" A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss 
Piff, trembling with indignation, called out: ' Name! ' 

"'I ivill name,' said Our Missis. 'There was roast 
fowls, hot and cold; there was smoking roast veal sur- 
rounded with brown potatoes; there was hot soup with 
(again I ask. Shall I be credited?) nothing bitter in it, and 
no flour to choke off the consumer; there was a variety of 
cold dishes set off with jelly; there was salad; there was — 
mark me! — fresh pastry, and that of a light construction; 
there was a luscious show of fruit. There was bottles and 
decanters of sound small wine, of every size and adapted to 
every pocket; the same odious statement will apply to 
brandy; and these were set out upon the counter so that all 
could help themselves.' * * * 

" ' I need not explain to this assembly the ingredients 
and formation of the British Eefreshment sangwich.' (Uni- 
versal laughter.) 

" ' Well, take a fresh, crisp, long, crust}'- penny loaf made 
of the whitest and best flour. Cut it longwise through 
the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice of ham. 
Tie a smart piece of ribbon around the middle of the whole 
to bind it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of 
clean white paper by which to hold it, and the universal 
French Refreshment sangwich busts on your disgusted vis- 
ion.' * (A cry of 'shame! ' from all.)" 

*0f late the lunch-basket system (already referred to) has come into vogue 
in France. The following annoTincement is posted in the stations of one French 
■ line: 

"MM. the travellers who wish to breakfast or dine arc advertised that 
they will find at the buffet hot meals in baskets for 2 fr., 50c. 

" These meals are composed of three dishes, one-half a bottle of wine, 



A MOSAIC OF TEAVEL. 109 

Last of all, let its cross the Channel, and consider some 
of the more wonderful features of English railways. 

Many of the English railroads follow the lines of the old 
Roman roads, such as Watling street (ffrom Chester to 
Dover), Foss way, Ermine street, and the Antonine way. 
It is generally thought by Americans that English cars at- 
tain a greater speed than do those in this country. But of 
late (as we shail see when we come to speak of speed) it has 
been shown that many of our eastern trains make as good 
time as the fastest English ones. We are naturally attached 
to our own railway system. But so are the English to 
theirs, although the more cosmopolitan and better-travelled 
Englishmen acknowledge the superiority of our cars, espe- 
cially as making utterly impossible the outrages and murders 
so frequent in the closed and isolated compartments of their 
coaches. In looking over the index of the London " Times," 
the writer of these pages was astonished to find that during 
a period of twenty years there was not a single year in 
which many outrages, attempted murders, and attacks by 
madmen were not reported to have occurred in the closed 
compartments of English cars. When pickpockets travel 
by rail and are known by the policemen, they are placed in 
sepai'ate compartments with locked doors. An amusing in- 
cident is related of the capture of a thief in an English car. 
A lady and a gentleman were travelling alone. Presently 
the man asked the lady if she would oblige him by rising 
and turning her face to the window, as he wished to make 
some changes in his wearing apparel. She complied. After 
a moment he said, " ISTow, madam, you may resume your 

bread, and dessert. MM. the travellers have thirty minutes to take their 
meals in their cars." 

In other words, you procure a lunch-basket at one station, and return it 
empty at the next. 



110 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OE THE RAILWAY. 

seat." But what was his astonishment at finding that the 
supposed lady had also made some little changes in her 
attire, and Asfes, in short, transformed into a man, as he him- 
self in turn was Changed into a lady. A laugh ensued, and 
the man who had first spoken said to his companion, " It 
appears that we are both anxious to avoid recognition. 
What have yo\i done? I have robbed a bank." 

" And I," said the whilom lady, as he dexterously fast- 
ened a pair of handcufis on the wrists of his interlocutor, 
" I am Detective J. of Scotland Yai'd, and in female apparel 
have shadowed you for two days. Now," drawing a re- 
volver, "keep still." 

This incident is told here to suggest the complete help- 
lessness of ordinary English passengers in case they are 
shut in with dangerous charactei's in the small compart- 
ments of their cars. But notwithstanding that this danger 
is as plain as the nose on a man's face, the stubboi'n insular- 
ism of the British, and their love of personal exclusiveness 
prevent them from adopting to any great extent our demo- 
cratic aisled cars. When American cars were first intro- 
duced on the Midland road, people came and looked at them 
and then went away and took passage in a rival line. Yet 
our Pullman and Wagner coaches are universally liked in 
England. Whether our ordinary cars will ever supplant 
theirs is doubtful. There are good things to be said of the 
English car. The railway service of Great Britain is the 
finest in the world. The cushions of the first-class coaches 
are rich and sober in tone, and extremely comfortable. Every- 
thing is done for the traveller's comfort by polite officials, 
the tickets of passengers are examined just before the train 
starts, your luggage goes in the same van with yourself, the 
cars are started gently and gradually, the best roads are 



A MOSAIC OP TRAVEL. IH 

smooth as glass, the speed high, and the tracks carefully 
guarded by watchmen, by overhead bridges, and by fines 
levelled against trespassers. 

One of the wonders of the world is the underground 
railway of London — or rather railways, for London is now 
belted by a neai-ly complete double circle of these subterra- 
nean ways. The only similar works in the world are 
the underground railway of Constantinople ( which is 
about half a mile long, and cost one million dollars), 
and the Fourth avenue tunnel in New York city, extend- 
ing from Forty-second street to Harlem River, a distance 
of four miles. 

The inner circle of the London roads is twelve miles 
long, and consists partly of tunnels and partly of cuttings 
(with high walls) opening to the sky. The Metropolitan was 
the first, and was built for the purpose of affording the 
Great Western railway a city station at Farringdon street. 
It was afterward extended under the most crowded portion 
of the mighty city. Connected with it is the Metropolitan 
District railway, filling out the westerj;i portion of the 
circle or ellipse, and called the Daylight Route, owing to 
the number of open cuttings. These great arteries of intra- 
mural trafiic run either on a level with or underneath the 
gas-pipes, water-mains, and sewers, and it may well be im- 
agined that all the skill of a sui'geon was needed to avoid 
severing some part of the vast network formed by these 
conduits. Thrice was it necessary, during the construction, 
to tunnel under the great" Fleet Ditch" sewer, and yet the 
passage of the sewage could not be interrupted for a single 
moment. In case buildings were to be tunnelled under, it 
was necessary to purchase them, and they were then gener- 
ally demolished. The underground roads cost from two 



112 WOKDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and a half to four million dollars per mile, and the Metro- 
politan now pays four per cent on its capital. The roads 
act the part of a go-between, or passenger exchange, with 
respect to the other great trunk lines centring in London, 
since wherever the underground lines intersect them, quad- 
ruple subterranean tracks are laid, that the surface roads may- 
have room to run in their trains and transfer their passen- 
gers. In this way a passenger arriving from the north can 
now at once continue his journey southward, if he so chooses, 
without carriage transfer through the crowded streets of 
the city. The lines are worked on the block system of sig- 
nals, a very necessary precaution where trains follow each 
other from daylight to midnight, at intervals of one and 
two minutes. Two or three of the small hours of the night 
are reserved for repairs, and during this time no trains are 
run. In 1880 the Metropolitan road carried over sixty- 
three million passengers. The engines burn either coke or 
a smokeless coal from South Wales (called Bwlflfa coal), and 
the exhaust steam is condensed in the water tank. But 
notwithstanding all precautions there is a sulphurous, disa- 
greeable smell in the tunnels, and a dingy atmosphere gives 
its tone to everything. The trains are almost noiseless, 
and glide in weirdly out of the darkness to the light of the 
sunken station, stop for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then 
rapidly move on again. At the stations time is saved by 
having the trains so made up that each different class of 
cars may always stop directly over against a certain 
portion of the platform, which is labelled "first," "sec- 
ond," or "third" class, as the case may be. This enables 
people to wait in the place where they can step directly 
aboard, on the arrival of the train. The cars are lighted 
by gas. 



A MOSAIC OF TEAVEL. 113 

The year 1876 saw the completion of still another sub- 
terranean railroad in London, that of the East London com- 
pany, extending south-easterly from the Liverpool street 
Station of the Great Eastern railroad, passing under the 
warehouses and water-basin of the London docks, thence 
through the famous Thames tunnel to the New Cross 
station of the South Eastern railway. This gigantic sub- 
terranean and subfluvial structure cost sixteen million 
dollars, and is six miles in length. 



CHAPTER VII, 



A HANDFUL OF CURIOSITIES. 



r I IHE inventive genius of mechanicians has exercised itself 
-■- in the excogitation of a good many- fantastic and dar- 
ing plans for railroads and locomotives. There have been 
not only railroads under the ground and in the air, but 
railroads in the clouds, railroads among the tree-tops, and 
railroads on the ice, and the niodels of even a submarine 
railway have been constructed and exhibited. And there 
have been flying locomotives, locomotives with sails, locomo- 
tives on sled-runners, and bicycle locomotives. 




(By permission of the " Scientific American.") 
A LOCOMOTIVE ON SLED RUNNERS. 

Some years ago a Locomotive on Sled-Bunners was con- 
structed by the Messrs. Neilson of Glasgow, Scotland. 
It was employed in Russia for drawing passengers and 
freight over the ice between Saint Petersburg and Cron- 
stadt. The two driving-wheels in the rear are studded 
with sharp spikes. The front part of the engine rests on a 
sledge, which is swivelled, and is turned to the right or left 
by the wheels working in connection with an endless screw 

114 



A HANDFUL OP CURIOSITIES. 115 

and a segment rack. The locomotive is said to have run 
eighteen miles an hour over the ice. From the Russian 
ice locomotive, the transition is natural to Railroads on the 
Ice. On February 12th, 1879, when the mercury stood 
twenty degrees below zero, the first train of the Northern 
Pacific railroad to cross the Missouri River passed over on 
ice three feet deep. The track was laid on twelve-foot ties, 
and the cars carried over a number of visitors and a quan- 
tity of railroad iron. In January of 1880, a similar road 
was built across the frozen Saint Lawrence at Hochelaga. 
A rough bed was first levelled in the ice; then cross beams- 
were fitted in, and upon these were placed longitudinal 
beams, which were themselves crossed by the ties that held 
the rails; water was then pumped over the whole structure 
to freeze it down. 

The idea of grading for a railroad through a forest with 
a cross-cut saw, and laying the ties on the stumps is cer- 
tainly a novel idea. But it has actually been done, and 
California can now enumerate among her unique -curiosi- 
ties a Railroad in the Tree-Tops. In Sonoma county, 
between Chipper Mills and Stuart's Point, where the rail- 
road crosses a deep wooded ravine, the trees are sawed off 
level, and the ties fastened upon the stumps. Of these trees, 
two are huge redwoods which stand side by side, and are 
sawed off seventy-five feet from the ground. Upon this 
firm support cars loaded with heavy saw- logs pass over with 
complete security. The reader will remember the curious 
suggestion made by Colonel John Stevens, to construct the 
Erie railroad on piles sunk in the ground. In 1839 a sec- 
tion of the projected road of the Ohio Railroad Company 
was laid on piles between the towns of Fremont and Mau- 
mee. The piles were from seven to twenty-eight feet long, 



116 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and were driven ten feet apart in four rows, the intention 
being to have a double track. Upon the piles were laid 
longitudinal chestnut sills; upon these the cross-ties, which 
were surmounted by stringers covered with the usual strap- 
iron of those days.- Fifty-two miles of this curious railroad 
were built at a cost of sixteen thousand dollars per mile. 
But the company failing in the hard times that followed 
the speculative mania of 1836, the road was never com- 
pleted, nor was a single train ever run over its track.* 

There are several Wooden Railways in the United States 
•and Canada. One of these, in the province of Quebec, is 
thirty miles long. The rails are of maple, four by seven 
inches, and trains run over them with remarkable smooth- 
ness at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour. The road is 
used for the transportation of timber, and the rolling-stock 
consists of one locomotive and thirty-five cars. Another 
wooden-track railway, fifteen and a half miles long, has 
been constructed by Messrs. Land and Pritchett on the 
gradings of the abandoned South Carolina Central railroad. 
It cost the firm twelve hundred dollars a mile, and was 
built by them to carry the products of their turpentine dis- 
tilleries to a market. 

Very curious are what may be called the Bicycle Rail- 
tvays, built with a single rail. One called the " Steam Car- 
avan " was begun in Syria, between Aleppo and Alexand- 
retta. The rail was raised on a wall of masonry twenty- 
eight inches high, and seventeen and one-half inches broad; 
on the rail travelled the wheels of the locomotive. The 
engine and the last car in the train were also to be supported, 
or braced, by obliquely placed leather-covered wheels travel- 

* For a description of Elevated City Railroads see Chapter X, near end, and 
for Colonel Stevens's idea see Chapter II, page 32. 



A HANDFUL OF CUEIOSITIES. 



m 




118 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

ling along the sides of the wall; these wheels also to serve 
as brakes, by the aid of properly applied levers. The 
"Steam Caravan" road seems never to have been com- 
pleted. A single-rail, or bicycle, railroad has also been 
constructed in this country. It is the invention of General 
Le Roy Stone; was in operation at Phcenixville, Penn- 
sylvania, in 1876, and was exhibited in Philadelphia in the 
same 3^ear. A two- wheeled locomotive has been constructed 
in Gloucester, New Jersey. The weight is four tons, and the 
wheels have very deep flanges. This bicycle locomotive was 
made for an elevated city railroad in Atlanta, Georgia. 
Similar to this locomotive are the Railway Velocipedes, so 
many of which are used on western roads.' They have a 
wheel on each track, are light in construction, and are pro- 
pelled by the feet and hands of the rider at the rate of 
twenty miles an hour. 

There are several Toy Railways^ or model railways for 
experiments, in this country and Europe. Mr. Robert Cole- 
man, a young millionaire living at Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 
has constructed, for purposes of experiment, a miniature 
railroad one hundred and fifty feet in length. It is in 
a building erected especially for the purpose. The roadway 
is circular with a double line of steel tracks extending 
around the room. The locomotives are about four feet in 
length, including the tenders. They are of English make 
and are perfect little beauties, the cabs being of solid wal- 
nut, and the boilers proper and the fire-boxes of wrought 
steel. The tenders are made of copper, and their supply of 
water is taken up by little scoops, from vats in the roadway, 
while the locomotives are in motion. There are patent 
safety switches, electric crossing signals, safety frogs, etc. 
The locomotives accurately repeat in miniature every 



A HANDFUL OP CURIOSITIES. 119 

smallest feature of large engines. Many hours are passed 
in this building by the wealthy proprietor in experiments 
as to high and low speed, friction, safety-devices, etc., while 
his three little locomotives go puffing and panting around 
the tracks. Mr. Percival Haywood, a gentleman of inde- 
pendent fortune, living near Derby, England, has also built 
a miniature railroad, with workshops, etc. The track is a 
mile long, and he has a number of tiny locomotives and 
cars. His experiments have respect to improvements in 
army field-railways and military railway plant. 

A Suhmarine Railtvay is probably about the last thing 
that most people would think of. Yet a Frenchman, Doctor 
La Combe, has had the audacity to work out the details of 
such a device, and his models were exhibited at the Palais 
de rindustrie in Paris, in 1876. His plan provides for a 
submarine railway between Dover and Calais. On a road- 
bed of heton, or concrete, three galvanized iron rails are to 
be placed; two for the track, and one in the centre. To 
the central rail the car is to be attached by rollers in oi'der 
to prevent its being derailed by the waves. The boat-car is 
to be air tight, and driven by a propeller-screw, worked by 
compressed air. The car is to be supplied with fresh air by 
a tube running up to the surface of the water where it is 
affixed to a buoy. A series of buoys on the surface would 
mai'k out the track of the car, and in case of any accident it 
(the car) would float on the surface, when cut loose below. 
The inventor is very confident of the success of his plan, if 
it were only tried. 

The Marine Railroad of Captain James B. Eads (builder 
of the Mississippi River jetties and the great St. Louis 
bridge) is to be 112 miles in length, uniting the Gulf of 
Campeachy with the Grulf of Tehuantepec. The route was 



120 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

surveyed in 1881, and enough work has been done to secure 
the generous concessions of aid aiForded by the Mexican 
government. Captain Eads's ship railway is designed to 
transport ocean vessels across the American isthmus, with- 
out unloading. He says that his studies have convinced 
him that the largest loaded ships may be carried with per- 
fect safety at ien or twelve miles per hour, on steel rails 
weighing but seventy pounds per yard, the kind used by 
first-class railroads, and on wheels w^hich shall not impose 
as great a pressure upon the rails as that of the driving- 
wheels of a first-class locomotive when at rest; and that no 
grades need be encountered from ocean to ocean greater 
than one per cent, or fifty feet to the mile. The ships are 
to be kept upright by the same means that are employed in 
dry docks. The propelling power is to be furnished by four 
locomotives, two on each side of the ship, which is itself to 
rest on a broad, wheeled cradle, or low car, running on 
many rails. At either ocean ships are to be elevated to 
the cradle by a vertical hydraulic lift, instead of by the in- 
cline originally contemplated. 

The idea of Atmospheric Railways originated with old 
philosopher Papin, of Blois, in France. His idea was that 
of conveying carriages along a large tube by means of 
a vacuum and atmospheric pressure. The plan was revived 
in 1810 by the Englishman Medhurst, and later was in 
practical operation at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. The 
tube in this latter case was a quarter of a mile long, and 
the car within it was used for the conveyance of passengers 
solely. The tunnel, or tube, was of brick and was nine feet 
high and eight feet wide. The piston that j)ropelled the car 
was rendered almost air-tight by means of a fringe of 
bristles extending nearly to the surrounding brickwork of 



A HAKDFUL OF CURIOSITIES. 121 

the tunnel, and to its floor. A fan worked by a steam-engine 
both exhausted and compressed the air. The motion of the 
car was pleasant, and the ventilation ample. The best 
pneumatic railway was patented in London in 1834 by an 
American named Pinkus. He made his air-tube only forty 
inches in diameter, placing it under the car, to which it was 
attached by a vertical arm working in a continuous slot. 
The tube extended the whole length of the railway, was 
firmly fixed to the roadbed, and only the vertical arm moved 
forward, pushing the car with it. The vertical arm or lever 
was operated by a pneumatic piston in the tube. In 1846 
five miles of road on this plan were in operation between 
London and Croydon. The device has not jproved of practi- 
cal value. 

A Flying Locomotive was constructed by Mr. Moy and 
successfully operated at the Aeronautical Exhibition in Eng- 
land in 1868. The engine weighed thirteen pounds, and in 
connection with aero-plane wheels was made to lift itself, 
and forty pounds in addition, to a height of six inches, in 
continuous flight around the room. 

The device of a chariot or Car ivHJi Sails, spoken of by 
Bishop Wilkins in his " Mathematical Magick," and at vari- 
ous times made use of on the level roads of Holland, Spain, 
and China, has been twice or thrice revived in America. 
One instance has already been mentioned.* One of the 
most successful of these sailing cars has been devised by Mr. 
C. J. Bascom, of the Kansas Pacific railroad. It has been 
used for years as a hand-car on that road. The mast is 
eleven feet high, and the triangular sail has two booms. 
On the plains a speed of forty miles an hour has been 
attained by the car, with the wind right abeam (on the 

* See page 39. 



122 WOKDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

side), the sail close hauled, and the road full of disadvan- 
tageous curves. 

The sailing-car tried on the South Carolina railroad in 
1830 was very successful. A trial-trip was made in it by 
fifteen gentlemen. The experiment afforded high sport, 
according to a local paper. The car flew over the track at 
the rate of fourteen miles the hour, with the wind blowing 
veiy fresh right abeam, and driving the car in either 
direction with equal speed. When going at twelve miles an 
hour, the mast went by the board, carrying with it the sail 
and rigging, together with several of the crew. The dam- 
age was repaired, and the wind presently changing, it was 
discovered that the car could sail within four points of the 
wind. 

Two other railroad curiosities remain to be described in 
this chapter. 

Captain C. W. Williams, U. S. A., has recently invented 
a Telegraphic Ca)% or moving telegrapli office. It was suc- 
cessfully tried on the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line in 
1882. A line of electric wire laid alongside the track com- 
municates with certain key-blocks and metallic rollers fixed 
to the ties. On the bottom of the telegraphic car are two 
long strips of metal (one on each side), which, when the car 
is in motion, pass over the successive rollers on the cross- 
ties, depressing them as they pass. The rollers are at such 
distances apart that the strips on the car always touch one 
or another of them. When the rollers are depressed by one 
of the car-strips, electric communication is established with 
the wire along the track, and the deflected current passes up 
into the car and down on the other side through the second 
car-strip to the main line again. By this invention not 
only may trains communicate with each other at any time, 



A HANDFUL OF CURIOSITIES. 



133 




124 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

but the train-despatcber may be in constant and close con- 
nection with every train on his line. 

Prof. P. H. Dudley, a citizen of the United States, after 
working for eight years at the invention of a piece of 
mechanism to be used for the inspection of tracks, finally 
perfected a machine of the following description: A strip of 
plain paper, about twenty inches wide, is fed from a roll 
into a small machine, where it passes under a complex set of 
overflowing pens which are connected by rods and springs 
with the car wheels below. For every fifty feet of track 
passed over by the Dynograph Car, the paper moves one 
inch. The automatic machinery makes a complete register 
on the paper strips of the state of the track: it shows the 
condition of each joint, frog, and grade-crossing, and reveals 
at a glance any inequalities or undulations in the rails. 
After a railroad has been examined, the operator shows his 
chart to the road-superintendent, who then sees instantly 
just where repairs are needed. There is also connected with 
the machine an electrical attachment for indicating mile- 
posts and stations; this is worked by hand. There are only 
two of these machines in existence. One is operated by the 
inventor, and was exhibited at the Railway Exposition in 
1883, and the other has been sent to Australia. The machine 
used by the inventor is placed in a special car containing, 
besides the work-room, a library, parlor, dining-room, 
kitchen, bed-room, and store-room; and in this car the 
inventor travels over the country on his tours of inspection. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MOUNTAIN RAILWAYS. 

T I IHE locomotive has proved to be a good climber, and the 
-'- defiant whinny w^ith which he announces his arrival 
has startled the eagles and the wild goats up among the 
crags and clouds of many a mountain pass in the Alps, the 
Andes, and the Rocky Mountains of America. There are 
five sorts of mountain railways, — gravity roads, rack-rail 
roads, counterpoise roads, roads with stationary engines, and 
the ordinary traction roads. 

Pennsylvania has several gravity railroads — all used for 
the transfer of coal to shipping points. That of the Dela- 
ware and Hudson Canal Company * lies among the pictur- 
esque Moosic Mountains, two thousand feet above the sea. It 
was built in 1828, was the third practical railroad in the 
country, and constituted a part of the gigantic scheme of 
the Philadelphia Quakers, William and Maurice Wurts, to 
connect the coal mines discovered by them in the valley of the 
Lackawanna with tide-water on the Hudson River, via their 
canal. The railroad filled up a gap seventeen miles long 
separating the mines from the mountain terminus of the 
canal. The hilly nature of the region determined the 
character of the railway. It consists of eight inclined planes 
from one mile to four miles in length. From the summit 
to Carbondale there is an uninterrupted descent, down which 

* For historical matter relating to this road and to the Mauch Chunli road, 
sec Chapter II, "The First American Railroads," pages 35-.38. 

125 



126 WONDERS AHD CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the cars rush at a speed of sixty miles an hour. An enor- 
mous fan at the summit engine-house regulates the rate of 
descent by atmospheric pressure. In 1877 the first passenger 
cars were put on the road, to the great enjoyment of visitors 
and citizens. The ride is one of the most peculiar and ex- 
hilarating in the world. You are reminded of the magical 
car of the subterranean Egyptian temple, described by Tom 
Moore in his " Epicurean." Here you are, travelling for 
miles, up hill and down, through beautiful scenery, and no 
visible agency to propel you. East and south the landscape 
stretches away for sixty miles; at Shepherd's Crook you 
whirl around the summit of a gorge four hundred feet in 
depth, with a series of cataracts leaping down three hundred 
feet among the hemlocks, and the valley of the Lackawanna, 
spotted with towns and farms, stretching out far and wide 
in the distance. There is no dust, no smoke, no cinders, no 
whistle, no insolent official; you only feel that some gigan- 
tic piece of clock-work is drawing you smoothly onward, and 
you lie back in your seat in tranquil enjoyment, and yield 
yourself to the novel illusion of magical power. 

Another gravity road in Pennsylvania is that of the 
Pennsylvania Coal Company, near Scranton. It extends for 
thirty- three miles through magnificent mountain scenery. 

A curious variety of coal railroad was the Switchback 
road — a portion of the Mauch Chunk gravity road (de- 
scribed in Chapter II). It was constructed on the occasion 
of the discovery of the Panther Creek mines. The cars, 
running smoothly on a down grade, were made to run up- 
hill by the momentum they had acquired, until they were 
stopped by the steepness of the grade; then the attraction 
of gravitation would pull them back again down-hill. But 
when they arrived at the bottom- or central part between 



MOUNTAIN RAILWAYS. 127 

the two hills, a switch, working by a spring, threw them on 
another track, and they continued down the mountain in 
a diiferent direction. The next switch would send them in 
the original direction, and so they zigzagged it down the 
mountain. This old switchback system is now disused, — 
a series of curves having supplanted the inclines. 

One of the wonders of the world fifty years ago was the 
old Portage railroad across the Alleghany Mountains in 
Pennsylvania. It formed a link in the system of canals 
and railroads constructed by the state, at a cost of seventeen 
million five hundred thousand dollars, between the cities of 
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In 1838 David Stevenson, an 
English civil engineer, said of the Portage railway, that, in 
boldness of design and difficulty of execution he could 
compare it to no modern work he had ever seen, excepting 
perhaps the roads through the passes of the Simplon 
and Mt. Cenis. The whole distance of three hundred and 
ninety-three miles between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh 
consisted of four sections. First there came the horse- 
railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia — eighty-two miles; 
road completed in 1833. There were inclined planes 
and stationary engines at each end of this section; over the 
intermediate portion of the line the cars were drawn by 
horses. It seems a strange idea to us that people should 
ever have clung to the thought that the state ought to 
build a railroad, and that private individuals should have 
the right to traverse it with their own cars drawn by 
their own horses, and pay toll as on common roads. Yet 
such was the plan actually tried for two years upon the 
Philadelphia and Columbia railroad. One who assisted 
in the construction of the road tells us that the drivers 
employed by various firms were a rough and stubborn 



128 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

set of fellows, and, as the officers of the railroad had no 
power to use compulsion, one of the drivers would often 
block the track for a considerable time, refusing to go either 
forward or backward. The usual remedy was to have the 
refractory fellow arrested, taken before a magistrate many 
miles off, and fined according to the law. The farmei'S were 
bitterly opposed to the introduction of the new-fangled 
locomotives, and fought stubbornly for the private-car sys- 
tem. But in 1834 the locomotive came (from Boston where 
it was built), and soon no more horses were to be seen on 
the road. 

At Columbia, passengers and freight were transferred to 
the boats of the eastern division of the Pennsylvania canal, 
which extended to Hollidaysburg, at the eastern foot of the 
Alleghanies (a distance of one hundred and seventy-two 
miles). To this canal the Juniata and th& Susquehanna 
contributed of their spai'kling waters. The canal boats 
were built in sections, and at the foot of the mountains 
were taken apart, loaded on wheeled trucks and so run 
over to Johnstown on the other side, via the Portage 
railroad. From Johnstown to Pittsburgh extended the west- 
ern division of the canal. It remains to describe the 
" Portage " division, in length thirty-six miles, and 
crossing the mountains at Blair's Gap, the summit of 
which was two thousand three hundred and twenty-six 
feet above the sea. The road passed over eleven levels, 
ten inclined planes, and four viaducts, and through a 
tunnel which was the first of its kind in America. The 
trains of four cars each were drawn up and down by 
stationary engines, one train ascending as the other descend- 
ed. The rails (rolled in Great Britain) were chained to 
cross blocks of sandstone. The road was operated for 



MOUHTAIF RAILWAYS. 129 

twenty-one years without a serious accident; but in 1854, 
the opening of the mountain division of the Pennsylvania 
railroad rendered useless' this great work, built by our 
fathers to last, as they thought, for generations. To-day 
only ruined locks and broken bridges remain to tell the 
story of the quaint predecessor of the Pennsylvania Central 
railroad.* 

The old Mountain Top Track of Virginia (opened in 
1854) was a temporary portion of a proposed through 
line to the West. It was four miles in length, and crossed 
the Blue Ridge at Fish Gap, at an elevation of one thou- 
sand eight hundred and eighty-five feet above tide water, 
and with the astonishing average gradient of two hundred 
and thirty-six feet to the mile. The peculiar climbing en- 
gines made for the road rested on six driving wheels, that the 
adhesive power of the engine might be as great as possible ; 
and for the same reason the water-tank was placed oij the 
boiler, and the supply of wood stored in side-boxes placed on 
the foot-board of the locomotive. These devices, with the 
aid of air-brakes, friction-brakes, and sand, enabled the 
locomotives to draw their loads up the steep grades without 
an accident. 

The predecessor of all the modern pleasure railways for 
the ascent of lofty mountains is the Mt. Washington cog- 
rail track (finished in 1869). It ascends the mountain at 
an average grade of one thousand three hundred feet to 
the mile. When the inventor, Sylvester Marsh, of Little- 
ton, New Hampshire, asked his state legislature for a 
charter, it was granted amid much merriment, and the 

* Mr. Solomon W. Roberts, the civil engineer of the Portage road, gives in- 
teresting reminiscences of his connection with it, in the "Pennsylvania Mag- 
azine of History and Biography," for 1877, pages 370-393. See also James 
Dredge's " History of the Pennsylvania Railroad," London and New York, 1879. 



130 WONDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. 

suggestion was made that the gentleman also receive per- 
mission to build a railroad to the moon. There are, in 
all, six ways of stopping the train on the Mt. Washing- 
ton road. The friction- brake consists of an iron band 
encircling each wheel, and tightened at pleasure. There 
are also atmospheric brakes at the side of each car. Not 
a single passenger has ever been injured on the road. In 
1869 the axle of the driving-wheel of the locomotive broke, 
but the train was instantly stopped without further dam- 
age. The only accident recorded is that which happened 
when some thoughtless person started an empty car down 
the track from the summit; the car shot down with terrific 
velocity and was shattered into splinters at the bottom. 

The immediate successor of the Mt. Washington road 
was that of the Arth Rigi, or Rigi-Kulm, three-fourths of a 
mile long, opened in 1873. One of the engineers of the 
Eigi road, Herr Riggenbach, had visited the Mt. Washing- 
ton railroad, and afterward modelled his road upon that. 
Rigi-Kulm is the highest of the seven peaks called Rigi, 
and the view from its summit is as magnificent as that 
from Mt. Washington. Another railroad ascends from 
Vitznau, on Lake Lucerne. The funicular counterpoise 
railroad up the Vaudois Rigi is the boldest work of its kind 
in the world, the ascent being three feet in five. On level 
ground the locomotive of the Rigi-Kulm road looks almost 
as if it had broken down behind and were resting on its fore- 
legs (or wheels). On a level it looks as much out of place as 
a seal on land. The boiler looks like a huge beer bottle 
placed vertically. The sides of the tender are of wire, for 
the sake of lightness. The seats of the car all face down- 
hill, and foot-stools serve to keep the passengers from slid- 
ing off their seats. In going up, the car precedes the loco- 



MOUNTAIN EAILWAYS. 131 

motive, and follows it in descending, no couplings being 
used. To guard against the train jumping the track and 
being hurled down the dizzy precipices along the route, a 
projecting edge runs along each side of the central cogged 
rail, and the engine and car are provided with strong rods, 
the ends of which are bent in such a manner as to pass 
under the projections. Any jump or jerk of the train is, 
therefore, made impossible by the pressure of the rods 
against the under surface of the projections. 

Switzerland has at least two other inclined railroads — 
the Uetliberg, overlooking Lake Zurich, and that on the 
flanks of the Giessbach. The latter is double-tracked, and 
is worked by the equipoise system. The excess of weight 
needed in order that the descending car may pull up the 
ascending one, is a little over a ton. The weight added 
consists of water, which is filled into a receiver in the car 
just before it starts from the top of the mountain, and is 
automatically emptied when it reaches the foot. 

The city of Lyons, France, has inclined tramways be- 
tween its different quarters. In this case also, the descend- 
ing car balances the ascending one. The inclined railways 
of Cincinnati, Ohio, are worked by stationary engines. The 
first of these Cincinnati railways was built in 1872. 

The latest inclined railway is that of Green Mountain, 
in the island of Mt. Desert, Maine. It resembles the Mt, 
Washington road, except that there is no trestling, the track 
timbers being bolted to the solid ledge. The idea of the 
road originated, it is said, with a very stout lady, whose 
superfluous flesh rendered it an impossibility for her to 
enjoy the splendid view from the summit. She had as- 
cended Rigi-Kulm and Mt. Washington by railway, and 
expressed her wonder that no one had thought of a similar 



132 WOKDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

means of ascending Green Mountain. A young Bangor 
lawyer, named F. H. Clergue, overheard her remark, was 
struck witli the idea, and eventually formed a company by 
which the road was built in the spring and summer of 1883.* 

Brazil has an inclined railway at St. Paul. It is oper- 
ated by wire ropes, and was built by James Brunlees, the 
English engineer. f 

Perhaps the most striking of the mountain tracks is that 
which audaciously climbs the smoking crater of world- 
renowned Vesuvius. The road was opened June 6, 1880. 
A broad and splendid highway leads zigzagging up to the 
foot of the cone, where, on a level spot on the west side 
of the mountain, is situated the lower station, or depot. 
Straight away up the cone from this point stretches the 
track, looking like a gigantic ladder, mounting into heaven 
at the appalling angle of fifty degrees (average). The 
upper station is a simple but tasteful shed, placed about one 
hundred steps from the rim of the smoking and rumbling 
crater. About midway the inclination reaches sixty-three 
degrees, w^hich to most people seems practically perpendicu- 
lar, and the sensations experienced during the two minutes 
required to pass over this portion of the track may be better 
imagined than described. The road is double-tracked, and 
there is a counterpoise of cars, one up and one down. These 
are worked by a stationai'y traction engine. The boiler of 
this engine was drawn up the carriage road by twelve 
horses, one of which died from the effects of the strain re- 
ceived. The huge pulleys that work the cars were pulled 
up the slippery cone by the united efforts of ninety men, 
and once at the top they were of service in hoisting other 

*See also " Science," April 4, 1884. 

t Further particulars of this road are given in the "Railway Review," Chi- 
cago, Oct. -20, 1883, page 613. 



MOUNTAIN RAILWAYS. 



133 




134 WO]S"DERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

material. Tliei'e was great perplexity at first in the minds 
of the contrivers of the road, as to where the water for 
the engine was to come from. But the constructor, Dall 
Ongaro, excavated two huge cistei'ns, and then laid broad 
stretches of red tile on the surface of lava crusts and cinders 
to collect rain water and conduct it into the receptacles pre- 
pared. The joists of the track are bolted to the solid lava. 
A single cogged rail is placed on a continuous beam, about 
three feet high, and beneath the car is a single large wheel 
running on the rail ; but the car is steadied by two other 
wheels placed obliquely to the bottom of the car, and run- 
ning on a projecting edge of the road-beam. The railway 
cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is insured 
against the volcano (!) by an Italian company, for one hun- 
dred thousand dollars. 

The most famous mountain railways with ordinary trac- 
tion are, in Europe, the Semmering, the Brenner, the 
Mt. Cenis, and the St. Gothard; in North America the 
Central Pacific and the Denver and Eio Grande, each de- 
scribed in Chapter III; and in South America the Callao, 
Lima, and Oroya railway. 

The Semmering railroad between Vienna and Trieste 
was the precursor and prototype of the great Mt. Cenis 
undertaking. It is a magnificent engineering achievement, 
its peculiar feature being its great viaducts; these, together 
with its tunnels and snow sheds, or covered galleries, made 
its cost double that of the later Brenner line. The gradi- 
ent of the Semmering is one foot in forty. 

The Brenner railroad, completed in 1867, extends across 
the Alps from Innsbruck to Botzen, connecting Bavaria 
with Italy. It climbs over the pass at a height of four 
thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five feet, passing 



MOUNTAIN RAILWAYS. 135 

through twenty-three tunnels on its way. In ascending 
from Innsbruck a deep and wide lateral valley is met with; 
the road thereupon turns short, and, clinging to the face of 
the mountain, winds around until it has encircled the side 
valley, and then enters the opposite mountain at a point 
directly in front of that where it turned a few moments 
before, only considerably higher up. Let us see how a 
writer in " Chambers's Journal" describes this achievement: 
" The difficulty and its solution may be well realized by im- 
agining a railway cut in the face of a long row of houses 
(which must be supposed to represent one side of the main 
valley). This railway starting from one end of the row at 
the basement level gradually rises, in order to pass over 
the roofs (that is, the head of the pass) of another row of 
houses at right angles to and at the end of the first row. 
In its course it encounters a side-street, the lateral valley, 
with no outlet at the other end, and which is too broad to 
be spanned by a bridge. Now the line at this point has 
reached the second floor; and to get to the opposite houses 
and pursue its course, it turns a sharp corner, runs along 
one side of the blind street, crosses it at the further or 
blind end by merely clinging still to the houses, returns 
along the other side, rounds the corner into the main street 
and resumes its course. During this detour the ascent has 
been continued uninterruptedly, so that on the return of 
the line to the desired opposite corner it has mounted to the 
third floor. Applying this illustration, the reader will per- 
ceive the ingenious yet simple solution of the difficulty. 

" The effect on reaching the flTst corner of the lateral val- 
ley is most remarkable. The line is seen at the opposite 
corner far above the traveller's head entering a tunnel: and 
how he is going to get there is a puzzle which he hardly 



136 WONDEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

solves before he finds himself on the spot looking down on 
the corner he has just left, wondering how he ever came 
from there. 

" But even this striking instance of engineering triumphs 
is eclipsed by a portion of the line on the other side of the 
pass. Pursuing the direction he has already come, the 
traveller has stopped in the descent at Schelleberg, a 
small station perched at an enormous height above an ex- 
pansive valley, when he perceives a village five hundred feet 
almost perpendicularly below him, which he is informed 
is the next station. It would not take long to reach this 
village (Gossensass) by a direct descent, but in a train he 
has to run far past it, always descending, then turn com- 
pletely round, and run back again in the direction he has 
come from, but now on a level with Gossensass. But at 
the point where this evolution has to be made occurs 
another lateral valley, much longer than the first alluded 
to; and this time one which it is desired to cross, as Gos- 
sensass lies, as it were, on the basement of the house on the 
third floor of which is Schelleberg. The train proceeds, 
therefore, to turn the corner into the side street as before; 
but without pursuing the street to its end, it suddenly 
dives into one of the houses, makes a complete circuit of its 
interior, and emerges in the opposite direction; returning 
to the corner whence it started by means of the same houses, 
but on a lower floor. The appearance of this engineering 
feat is quite bewildering; and after tunnelling into the 
hill on the sharp curve, and then finding himself proceed- 
ing back toward the place he has just come from, the trav- 
eller experiences a difficulty in believing that the line 
parallel with him, but almost over his head, is the one he 
has just been passing over." 



MOUNTAIN KAILWAYS. 137 

Tlie St. Gotliai'd railway was completed in 1880, after 
six years of labor, and the expenditure of forty million 
dollars. It extends from Immensee in Switzerland to 
Chiasso in Italy. There are fifty-six tunnels, with an 
aggregate length of twenty-five miles. " The locomotive," 
says a recent writer, "scuffles up a steep road for a while, 
then thoughtfully approaches a mountain that is too hard 
to climb, and, instead of skipping along the edge and elud- 
ing it, plunges boldly into it, makes a complete 'circuit in a 
spiral tunnel, and comes out two hundred feet above where 
it went in. This adroit trick is resorted to seven times, 
and in one big mountain the locomotive actually accom- 
plishes two circuits of a mile each, rising in corkscrew 
fashion, and emerging triumphant up where the eagles 
brood." Nobody can pass over such a magnificent road as 
this, with its fifty-six tunnels, its thirty-two bridges, and 
dozen huge viaducts, without being impressed anew with 
admiration for the power and skill of man, and still more 
with reverence for the stupendous snowy mountains, and 
sounding cataracts of nature. Nor are the natural beau- 
ties of the pass injured by the railway, which rather adds 
to the picturesqueness of the sceneiy by its bridges and 
terraces. There are some masses of debris from the tun- 
nels, which are now somewhat of an eye-sore, but nature 
will soon drape them with beauty.* 

We have not yet spoken of the great St. Gothard 
Tunnel on this railroad. It is the longest tunnel in the 
world (nine and one-fourth miles), being about one and a 
half miles longer than the Mt. Cenis tunnel. The cost was 
twelve million dollars. The motive power that enabled 

*From certain oiTtlooks on the St. Gothard road the height is so great 
that cattle pasturing far down in the valleys seem no larger than ants on a table- 
cloth. 



138 WOKDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the fifty drills to advance twenty-one feet a day was com- 
pressed air; and this as it escaped took back with it the 
deleterious gases and the vitiated air thrown off by the 
explosion of the dynamite, and by the bodies of the laborers. 
During the prosecution of the work three hundred and ten 
laborei's were killed, and eight hundred and seventy-seven 
wounded. The originator and first constructor of the road 
and tunnel was Louis Favrey, of Geneva, who died before 
the work was completed. 

The idea of the Mt. Cenis tunnel was first broached in 
1832 by a Mr. Medail. The plan of using compressed air 
for working drills, and of employing mountain streams as a 
power for compressing the air was the idea of three young 
Italian engineers — Sommellier, Grandis, and Grattoni. On 
Christmas Day, of 1870, the working parties met in the 
heart of the mountain, and the two sets of excavations did 
not vary more than one foot and a half from the same level. 
The tunnel is seven and seven-tenths miles long. 

As far back as 1820 the idea of a tunnel through the 
Hoosac Mountain began to be discussed. There being no 
railroads at that time, it was intended to make the tunnel 
the passage-way of a canal to connect the waters of the 
Atlantic with those of the Erie canal. In 1852 the Troy 
and Greenfield Railroad Company was incorporated for the 
purpose of constructing an iron way through the mountains 
and along the Deerfield and Hoosac Valleys. Work on the 
tunnel was begun in 1852 with a groove and core machine 
for drilling the rock. This machine proved worthless, and, 
after eleven years of various vicissitudes and fluctuations of 
foi'tune and suspensions of labor, a new start was taken in 
1863. This time a drill was used that had been invented 
by Charles Burleigh, of Fitchbui-g. It consists simply of a 



MOUHTAIlsr EAILWAYS. 139 

cylinder and piston worked by compressed air, and driving 
a drill at the rate of three hundred strokes a minute. 
Several of these drills were operated at the same time, and 
Deerfield River supplied the power. Ten years these light- 
ning-swift Burleigh drills plied their task, and then daylight 
shone through the tunnel (November 27, 1873). The rate 
of progress was doubled after the discovery of nitro-glycer- 
ine ; but still the delays had been long and vexatious, and 
the cost of the work amounted to fourteen million dollars. 
One of the greatest triumphs of modern civil engineering 
was the meeting of the various excavations of this tunnel 
on planes separated from each other vertically by only 
five-sixteenths of an inch! America beat Europe in this 
respect, for the difference in the Mt. Cenis tunnel was 
one foot and a half The problem was, first, to run a 
perfectly straight line across the mountain, to serve as a 
basis for trigonometrical calculations. In running this 
line a broad path was cut through the forest, and sight- 
ing-posts set up, both on the Hoosac and on neighboring 
mountains. Repeated surveys were made in all states 
of the atmosphere, and the line finally determined upon 
was indicated by bolts fixed at intervals in the solid 
rock. In order to furnish two new faces upon which to 
drill, and at the same time provide for the permanent ven- 
tilation of the tunnel, a great central shaft was sunk at 
a cost of half a million dollars and four years' work. It 
will be seen, then, that after the completion of the shaft, 
there were four parties of men at work, hewing away there 
blindly in the heart of a great mountain, yet relying so 
firmly on their calculations that they never for a moment 
doubted that they were not all working in one straight line, 
and on one and the same level, and that in the course of 



140 WOISTDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

years they would meet. During the sinking of the central 
shaft (one thousand and twenty-eight feet deep) a terrible 
accident occurred. A tank of gasoline, which stood near 
the hoisting apparatus, caught fire and instantly envel- 
oped the shed and the apparatus in flames. Thirteen 
men were at the bottom of the shaft. All communication 
with the hoisting apparatus was cut off, and presently a 
mass of burning timbers, steel drills, and other tools fell 
down the shaft upon the heads of the unfortunate men. 
Even if the burning timbers had not been sufficient to kill 
them, the waters would have done so, for immediately upon 
the cessation of the pumping it rose rapidly around them. 
They all perished, and their bodies were not i-ecovered for a 
year. During the quarter of a century that the tunnel was 
in building, two hundred lives, in all, were lost. Mr. IST. H. 
Eggleston, in the "Atlantic Monthly," for March, 1882, de- 
scribes the sensations of those who descended the central 
shaft: " At every descent of the bucket it seemed as though 
those in it were being dashed down the dark pit to almost 
certain destruction. Speed was necessary, and the ma- 
chinery was so arranged that the descent of over a thousand 
feet was made in a little more than a minute. The sensa- 
tions experienced by those who descended the shaft were 
peculiar. First, there was the sensation of rapid, helpless 
falling through space in the darkness; then, as the speed 
was at last abruptly arrested, it seemed for a moment as 
though the motion had been reversed, and one were being as 
rapidly elevated to the surface again." The same writer, 
after remarking that now that the tunnel is finished and in 
use, a perpetual cloud of smoke pervades it, each of the 
forty trains a day adding its quota, so that it is impossible 
to see more than a few yards in either direction within the 



MOUZSTTAIN" EAILWAYS. 141 

bore, — continues as follows: " No artificial light, not even 
the head-lights of the locomotives, can penetrate the dark- 
ness for any considerable distance. The engineer sees 
nothing, but feels his way by faith and simple push of steam 
through the five miles of solemn gloom. If there is any 
occasion for stopping him on his way through the thick 
darkness, which may almost literally be felt, the men who 
constantly patrol the huge cavern to see that nothing ob- 
structs the passage, do not think of signalling the approach- 
ing train in the common way. They carry with them pow- 
erful torpedoes, which, whenever there is occasion, they 
fasten to the- rails by means of screws. The wheels of the 
locomotive, striking these, produce a loud explosion, and 
this is the tunnel signal to the engineer to stop his train." 
The most stupendous feat of mountain engineering since 
the building of the road through the Simplon Pass has been 
accomplished by the American engineer, Henry Meiggs. 
The Calico, Lima and Oroya railroad, constructed by him 
for the Peruvian govei-nment, crosses the Andes by a tunnel 
at the enormous height of fifteen thousand, six hundred and 
forty-five feet, or nearly three miles above sea level, being 
a point only one hundred and thirty-six feet below the icy 
summit of Mt. Blanc. This is indeed A Railroad among 
the Clouds, and the whistle of the locomotive is heard at no 
higher point on the globe.* It is not the first great road 
in Peru. Centuries ago all the difiiculties that beset the 
courageous modern engineer were met and conquered in 
this land of stupendous scenery, by a now vanishing race, 
and the remains of the royal road of the Incas yet testify to 
the magnificence of an empire, only to be compared with 

* The Denver and Eio Grande narrow gauge road crosses Fremont Pass at 
an altitude of eleven thousand, five hundred and forty feet, bemg the next high- 
est railroad in the world. 



14^ WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

that of the Romans and the Aztecs, in the elaborate organi- 
zation and discipline of its people, and the grandeur of its 
public works. The great road of the Incas was conducted 
over mountains of perpetual snow, through galleries cut 
for miles through the stubborn rock, over ravines filled 
up with solid masonry, and over rivers and dizzy chasms by 
means of great suspension bridges swinging in the air. 
There were mile-stones at regular intervals, and guide- 
posts through the sandy wastes, while trees, and odoriferous 
shrubs, and fountains along the sides, offered their refresh- 
ment in unstinted measure to the weaiy traveller. But the 
empire of the Incas has passed away, and we are now called 
upon to admire the mechanical skill and daring energy of a 
plain American citizen who comes from a land where all 
are Incas. 

Up and up, through some of the most gloomy and sub- 
lime scenery on earth, zigzags the iron road, rising four 
thousand, nine hundred and ten feet in the first thirty-nine 
miles, spanning the terrible gorge of Los Infernillos, cross- 
ing the famous Verrugas viaduct, darting through its sixty- 
one tunnels, climbing, climbing, higher and higher among 
the crags, up toward the gigantic snow-peaks that soar into 
the everlasting blue on every side, until at last the great 
summit tunnel is reached, " Tufiel de la Cima," a cavern 
three thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven feet in 
length, bored through an icy plateau which is still far 
below the summits of the great peaks around it. 

The difficulties encountered by the workmen in the 
construction of this Peruvian road were many and dis- 
heartening. All the material had to be ti'ansported up the 
mountains on the backs of mules ; in some places the road- 
bed could be hewn in no other way than by lowering the 



MOUNTAIlsr EAILWAYS. 143 

laborers by ropes over the face of the cliffs; at the summit 
tunnel the extreme cold and the rarefied nature of the air, 
together with the continual percolation of snow-water, made 
the progress of work very slow and discouraging; only 
natives of the mountains could work there at all, and even 
they suffered extremely from vertigo, bleeding at the nose 
and ears, and sickness at the stomach. During the seven 
years that the building of the road was going on,* ten 
thousand Chinese and Chilian laborers died from the effects 
of the climate and from epidemic diseases. Here indeed 
was there need of an iron will and an indomitable purpose, 
and the triumph of these over such terrible obstacles lends 
to the story of the building of the Andean raili'oad an 
interest as inspiring as that produced by the story of the 
Central Pacific. 

It may easily be imagined that the steep grade and the 
numberless precipices of the Lima and Oroya road are well 
adapted for producing a thrill of pleasure or terror, as 
the case may be, in the nerves of those for the first time 
traversing the road from the summit downward. Mr. J. 
E. Montgomery in " Scribner's Monthly," for August, 1877, 
gives a vivacious account of the descent of a party of men 
in a hand-car from a point near the summit to the plains. 
(It is from his article that the facts in the preceding account 
have been taken) : 

" At Anchi, twelve thousand feet above the Pacific, the 
hand-car is loaded with its freight of six adventurous sight- 
seers, closely braced together. * * * As we descend in 
our rough vehicle, at the rate of sixty miles an hour; flying 



* It was finished in 1877 as far as Oroya, beyond the mountains. It is in- 
tended that this railroad shall connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and 
open up to commerce the great Amazonian Valley. 



144 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

across aerial viaducts, or dashing through sepulchral tun- 
nels; threatened now to be crushed between converging 
mountain-walls, or precipitated from pendulous terraces, 
the foaming Rimac emulating the maddening speed; now 
glancing back to take a last look at the glistening pinna- 
cles of the receding Andes; or straining eagerly forward 
to catch the first glimpse of the royal city of the plain 
and the shining ocean, the magnificence of the scenery and 
the magnitude of Mr. Meiggs's achievement break upon us 
with fresh force, and not for any peril of the way would we 
forego the exhilaration and novelty of the trip. Far other- 
wise was it with one of the party, a stately commodore. 
He who would face unflinchingly a whole broadside of mur- 
derous missiles, sprang from the car after ten miles over 
the wildest part of the route, declaring that nothing would 
tempt him to repeat such a foolhardy experiment. For the 
rest of us the excitement and exhilaration of this mode of 
travel became so attractive that we often went up to Anchi 
for the sole purpose of making the down trip." 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE VERTICAL RAILWAY.* 

rinHE fascination of applied science is nowhere more di- 
-*- rectly felt than in our modern methods of transit from 
place to place. The bicycle, with its premonitory tinkle 
and tiny signal lantern, the sumptuous steamship, the pal- 
ace car, the passenger elevator — which of all these is the 
most interesting vehicle of locomotion it were hard to say. 
But certainly, in respect of smooth and noiseless movement 
and general comfort, the elevator (or " vertical railway," as 
its inventor called it) leads all the rest. It is only some 
ten or twelve years since the vertical railway began to come 
into general use in the large cities of this country and 
Europe. A score of years ago, in the United States, build- 
ings were rarely carried up more than four or five stories, 
and the necessity for freight and passenger elevators was 
not very great. To-day the great height to which buildings 
are carried makes the necessity for some kind of rapid and 
easy vertical transit almost imperative. Cars and platforms 
hoisted by steel ropes and steam machinery have hitherto 
supplied this want, and in spite of the popular delusion that 
a high percentage of risk attends their use, and in spite of 
the lingering belief of hardy stair-climbers that they are an 
effeminate and unnecessary innovation, the manufacture 
and sale of them proceed in a continually increasing ratio. 
The story of the invention of the passenger elevator has 

* First published in " Harper's Monthly." 
10 145 



146 WOifDEES Ai^D CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

never up to this time been told, and the present chapter is 
therefore a new contribution to the history of inventions. 

Steam hoists of one kind or another for the lifting of 
freight have been in use for perhaps a century. In America 
the first man to manufacture platform freight elevators 
seems to have been Henry Waterman, of New York city. 
As early as 1850 one of his machines was in use by Hecker, 
of New York. The Tathams had them in 1853, and at 
about the same time either Waterman's machine or some 
very like them were in use in the establishment of Harper 
and Brothers. A cut of Waterman's machine, made from 
a rough sketch, is given on the next page.* The elevator 
was operated by means of a lever within the car (or rather 
within the frame-work of the car : the first closed car was 
designed by Otis Tufts). The lever took the place of the 
modern hand rope (or shipper rope) and served to throw the 
driving machinery into or out of gear. Waterman's shop 
was in Duane street, near Centre. About the same time 
that he was making elevators in New York, George H. 
Fox and Company, of Boston, were also building them and 
sending them to various parts of the country. The worm 
gear was used by this latter firm in 1850, and wire ropes 
in 1852, as well as the rack on the guide beams. 

In 1857 the firm of William Adams and Company, Boston, 
put sixteen freight elevators into the newly built granite 
warehouse called the State Street Block. These elevators 
were at first worked by hempen ropes, and the shafting that 
conveyed the power extended continuously through all the 
stores of the block. Other early inventors and patentees of 
portions of elevator machinery were Mr. E. G. Otis, of Yon- 

* The original sketcli Is In the possession of Mr. Charles Whittier, presi- 
dent of the Whittier Machine Company, of Boston. The author is indebted, to 
the courtesy of Harper and Brothers for permission to use this and the follow- 
ing cut in the present work. 



THE VEETICAL EAILWAY. 



147 



kers, New York, and Mr. Cyrus W. Baldwin, of Brooklyn, 
New York. The experiments and inventions of the latter 
gentleman have brought hydraulic elevators to a state of 
great perfection. 




waterman's elevator. 

Accidents were continually happening to the early eleva- 
tors, owing to the breaking of ropes. It was an accident to 
an elevator of his own make that led Mr. Albert Betteley, of 
the firm of William Adams and Company, of Boston, to the 
invention of the air-cushion safety device, considered by many 
as the best of such devices. The accident alluded to hap- 
pened at the store of Emmons, Danforth and Scudder, in the 
State Street Block. The elevator platform, loaded with 



148 WOKDEES AJSTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

seven boxes of sugar, had fallen from a great height into 
the cellar beneath the hoist way, and the pulleys and gear- 
ing at the top had been flung clear over upon the neighboring 
stores. Mr. Betteley was summoned to the scene. He, of 
course, expected to find a complete wreck in the cellar; but 
what was his surprise to find the boxes of sugar scarcely 
injured ! He set his wits to work, and soon reached the 
conclusion that, as the cellar was nearly air-tight, the 
rapidity of the descent of the platform had compressed the 
air so as to form an air-cushion, which had broken the vio- 
lence of the fall. After experimenting with a model, and 
satisfying himself of the truth of his surmise, Mr. Betteley 
took out a patent for an air-cushion. Otis Tufts used to 
jocularly call this " patenting a hole in the ground," in 
allusion to the air reservoir formed beneath the elevator. 
The object of the invention was to check gradually the mo- 
mentum of a falling car by making the hoistway nearly 
air-tight, excavating an air-reservoir at the bottom, and, if 
desired, building the bottom of the car in a parachute foi'm. 
This air-cushion device is now universally used in connec- 
tion with dumb-waiters, and also somewhat extensively in 
connection with passenger elevators. It will be alluded to 
again when we come to speak of elevator perils. 

To return to the elevator proper. The name of Otis 
Tufts has just been incidentally mentioned. It is to the 
brilliant genius and energy of this Boston inventor (now 
deceased) that the credit is due of inventing and construct- 
ing the first passenger elevator in the world driven by steam 
power. His "Vertical Screw Railway" was patented by 
him August 9, 1859, and the first one constructed was put 
up in the same year in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, ISTew York. 
The hotel was then in process of construction (William 



THE VERTICAL RAILWAY 



149 



Washburn, architect; Paran Stevens, Hiram Hitchcock, and 
others, lessees). An exactly similar screw elevator was 
soon after put into the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia — 
a hotel also leased to Paran Stevens. These two machines 
were the only screw elevators for passengers ever con- 
structed. 

People would not at first be- 
lieve a vertical railway a possible 
thing. Mr. Hiram Hitchcock, the 
present proprietor of the hotel, 
says, in a private letter to the 
writer, that " hundreds, even 
thousands, of persons visited the 
elevator daily. Men of note such 
as the Prince of Wales, the Prince 
de Joinville, and others, as well as 
eminent foreign engineers and 
scientific persons, were greatly in- 
terested in it." The object of the 
inventor was to produce a machine 
which should be perfectly safe, and 
he succeeded in doing so. The 
screw consisted of a great solid 
iron shaft twenty ^__.,^^^_. 
inches in diam- 
etei% and cast in 
sections. It ex- 
tended to the top 
of the building, 
and was not en- 
closed in any 

THE FIRST PASSENGER ELEVATOR. 




150 WOKDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

hoistway. A linge iron nut with screws encircled the shaft. 
Within the nut were rollers running upon the upper side 
of the thread of the shaft screw. In the language of the 
inventor, " The rollers were virtually carriage- wheels travel- 
ling upon a rail wound spirally along a cylinder." Upon 
the nut rested the car. The nut did not turn round, being 
prevented from doing so by a spur attached to it, and 
moving vertically with it along one of the guide rails. 
When the shaft was rotated the rollers inside the nut wound 
upward around the great spiral thread of the shaft, and 
thus by a continuous movement elevated the nut, and the 
car with it. A slot in the nut enabled it to pass by the 
stays that held the shaft to the wall. The car was square 
and closed. The governing rope passed through the car. 
There was an automatic stop, a friction brake, automatically 
closing doors, a fluid retarder, and a second set of rollers 
travelling directly upon the body of the cylindrical shaft in 
order to steady the movement of the nut. The fluid retarder 
requires a word of explanation. The descent of the car 
was eiFected b}'^ its own gravity, but the descent was subject 
to continual acceleration. To correct this the fluid retarder 
(also called pitcher-pump) was invented. It was made on 
the principle of water escaping from an aperture. When 
the car reached the top of the building, the gearing which 
automatically reversed the movement also set in operation 
the fluid retarders. The elevator was perfectly safe, since 
the car could not get off the screw. But it was very expen- 
sive (costing twenty-five thousand dollars), and was, more- 
over, rather slow and clumsy. Letters patent of this 
invention, with specifications and drawings, were filed by 
Mr. Tufts in the Great Seal Patent-office, in London, on the 
19th of March, 1860, through the patent agent Richard A. 



THE VEEtlCAL RAILWAY. 151 

Brooman, 166 Fleet street. In 1875, the Fifth Avenue 
screw elevator gave place to a modern rope elevator, to the 
regret of many who had for thirteen years admired its 
massive proportions, its stately movement, and its perfect 
safety. When removed, it was still in excellent condition. 
Mr. Darling, one of the present proprietors of the Fifth 
Avenue Hotel, has invented a rotary retarder, which is used 
with their rope elevator, and works admirably. 

We now come to the passenger rope elevator. The screw 
elevator was evidently not the thing. May 28, 1861, Mr. 
Tufts patented an improvement on the old rope elevator 
Avhich, combined with various previous elevator patents of 
his, formed the passenger elevator substantially as it now 
exists. His great and radical improvement consisted in 
providing a number of ropes, each of ivhich tvould sustain 
five times the weight of the car, the strain on these ropes 
being equally distributed by a system of levers. Previously 
there had been but one rope, which was continually break- 
ing. To.-day there is hardly a passenger elevator in the 
world without two or more ropes "yoked" to the car. The 
first one constructed for Mr. Tufts, and placed in the Ameri- 
can House, in Hanover sti'eet, Boston, in 1868, has its car 
suspended by six steel ropes, each tested to a ten-ton strain. 
The elevator with its engine was constructed by Moore and 
Wyman in the most solid style, and has run for fourteen 
years without an accident. A brass plate in the car has 
upon it the words " Vertical Railway," as well as the dates 
of Mr. Tufts's various patents. At the end of the first 
seven years of the running of this elevator a new steel rope 
was substituted for one of the old ones, but the old one was 
found to be uninjured. 

The intervention of the civil war put a complete stop to 



152 WONDEKS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY, 

the introduction of the new invention, and it was not until 
about 1870 that rope elevators began to come into general 
use. A good many of the old patents have been allowed 
to expire, i.e., they have now become common property. 
Europe is behindhand in the use of this invention. Many 
elevators are, however, in use there, and quite a number of 
American make are annuallj'^ sent over to France, Germany, 
and England, The Charing Cross Hotel and the Langham 
Hotel in London have direct-acting hydraulic elevators, i.e., 
the car rests directly upon a piston working in a water- 
cylinder. This simple form of hydraulic elevator is much 
used in this country also. The machines are operated by 
water-pressure from a city main, or by tanks in the top of 
the building. A great many have recently been put into 
the houses of wealthy residents of the Back Bay region in 
Boston, as well as in Providence and New York city. The 
huge tower at the Paris Exposition in 1878 contained a 
single piston elevator, a tube being sunk (as usual) to a 
depth equal to the height to be traversed — in this case two 
hundred and eighty-three feet. The triple wire cables were 
eight inches in diameter. The upward flight of the great 
wingless bird was performed in two minutes. A passenger 
hj'^draulic elevator costs about twenty-five hundred dollars, 
and one for freight about sixteen hundred dollars. A steam 
elevator costs (engine, hoistway, and all) between five thous- 
and and seven thousand dollars. 

Passenger elevators travel at a speed of from one hun- 
dred to two hundred and fifty feet a minute. The total dis- 
tance travelled in a year is often as much as three thousand 
miles. Cars lighted by gas have attached to them long rub- 
ber gas tubes which rise and fall with the car, A wire sus- 



THE VERTICAL RAILWAY. 153 

pended in tlie same manner carries the electric current to 
the annunciator in the car. Some elevators have indexes 
which show one waiting to ride just where the car is at any 
given moment. There are also registers to show the num- 
ber of trips made. Many elevator engines are constructed 
on the principle of the worm and worm gear. The winding- 
drums are scored to prevent friction of the ropes against 
each other. If the motive power is supplied by a stationary 
engine, the governing rope in the hands of the operator 
shifts the belt from one pulley to another to reverse the 
movement of the car; in case the motive power is supplied 
by a reversible steam-engine, the governing rope is attached 
directly to the valve of the steam-chest. The counter- 
balance weights attached to cars save expenditure of power 
on the part of the engine. 

There have been some strange experiments in the way of 
elevators. One of the most curious was that tried in the 
present New York post-office building. Reference is had to 
the twelve huge telescopical hydraulic machines in use for a 
few years — eight of them to handle the mails, and four for 
passengers. They were much like a sliding spy-glass, with 
the car on the small end. The three polished wrought-iron 
slides worked through water-tight stuffed boxes. By means 
of a rope passing through the car, water was admitted 
through a valve to the lower end of the tubular sti'ucture 
— the car then rose. Descent was effected by permitting 
the water to escape. The irremediable defects of the 
machines were, first, that the pressure of water in such long 
tubes was continually bursting and deranging the stuffed 
boxes; and second, heavy loads could not be lifted to the top 
of the building, owing to diminished pressure in the small 



154 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

upper tube. These structures are now supplanted by the 
machines of Otis Brothers, of New York city.* 

It is an instinct of men to feel a peculiar horror about 
falling from a great height. Perhaps our anthropoid ances- 
tors were troubled by falling from trees; hence our night- 
mare dreams of falling over precipices and the like, inher- 
ited from early times. As to elevator accidents, it is stated 
by the best authority that only one man in all New England 
was ever killed while in a closed passenger car. Every- 
where accidents occur through people heedlessly falling down 
elevator wells, or by persons trying to climb on moving 
elevators, or by their putting their heads where they have 
no business to be. A negro was once sent upstairs to bring 
down an elevator; he found its door locked. In trying to 
climb througli the transom into the car he took hold of the 
guide-rope; the car started; when people came upstaii'S, 
they found bis head on the floor of the car, and his body in 
the hall outside. At the Mechanics' Fair in Boston in 1881 
an elevator boy left his station to get a drink. When he 
returned he supposed the elevator to be where he had left 
it, and stepped backward into the well, and was killed. The 
only instance that has come under the notice of the writer 
of these lines of pei'sons being killed while inside a falling 
car is the case of the accident to the direct- acting hydraulic 
elevator in the Grand Hotel in Paris some three or four 
years ago. The machine had very heavy counter-balance 
weights to overcome a very heavy piston. But somehow the 
iron plate that attached the car to the piston broke; the car 
flew to the top of the building, breaking the counter-balance 

* Since the above was written hj'clraulic elevators have become quite popu- 
lar in New York, and have been placed in many of the large buildings recently 
erected (1884). 



THE VERTICAL RAILWAY. 155 

ropes, and then fell to the bottom, killing four persons. This 
is an exception. Most accidents occur, as has been stated, 
through carelessness; yet many of them are due to unpro- 
tected hatchways, and other kinds of neglect to provide 
safety apparatus. The law obliges owners of elevators to 
protect their hoistways by hatches and railings on each floor. 
But too often there is laxity in these matters on the part of 
inspectors of buildings. 

As a matter of fact, however, there is a remarkably 
small percentage of accidents connected with the vertical 
passenger railway — not one tithe of those occurring on 
horizontal steam railways. Most elevator accidents occur 
in connection with unsafe and flimsy freight elevators. In 
one year there were in Boston only sixteen accidents all told, 
and only one hundred and twenty-four in all the New Eng- 
land States in the same time. The fact is that there are in 
use so many brakes, extra steel ropes, clutches, automatic 
stops, and air-cushions that it is next to impossible for a 
well made elevator to fall. 

Some years ago a Chicagoan (Colonel A. C. Ellithorpe) 
patented some improvements on Mr. Albert Betteley's air- 
cushion, such as an air-valve, rubber apron, etc. On the 
occasion of one of the first tests of the colonel's improved 
air-cushion, namely, at the Parker House in Boston, in the 
year 1880, a serio-comic fiasco occurred, which came un- 
pleasantly near being serious alone. All things being in 
readiness for the experiment, eight persons walked into the 
car, among them the Boston agent of the air-cushion. The 
ropes were cut; the elevator fell with a thunderous rush 
and roar that were heard a block away; the pressure of the 
compressed air sent the glass of the doors flying into tjj^e 
halls ; the dust raised obscured the sight ; and the eight men 



156 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

were soon "laid out" in the office, one of them heing also 
" laid up " for some two months, another having his neck 
cut, and all being considerably " shaken up," to say the 
least. The trouble was that the air reservoir at the bottom 
had not been excavated deeply enough, and no provision had 
been made for the partial escape of the air by means of 
valve or w^ire grating. These things were soon remedied, 
both at the Parker House and elsewhere. Many hundred 
air-cushion reservoirs have since been constructed beneath 
elevators, and many marvellous tests have been made, almost 
all others being as conspicuously successful as the Parker 
House experiment was conspicuously a failure. At the 
Chicago Exposition in 1880 the ropes of a car weighing two 
thousand eight hundred pounds were cut, a number of 
visitors having first entered it. The car fell one hundred 
and nine feet; the passengers walked out smiling, and the 
crowd cheered with wild enthusiasm. In other experiments 
baskets of eggs taken into the car were unbroken, and per- 
sons held in their hands glasses of water, not a drop of 
which was spilled. When a car falls on such occasions as 
these that have been mentioned, it stops somewhat suddenly, 
although gently, when it reaches the air-cushion, and then 
settles slowly to the bottom of the well. 

The vertical railway has made a great change in the ap- 
pearance of our great cities. Twenty years ago they presented 
an outline that was comparatively flat and uninteresting. 
To-day it is very different. The towering masses of their 
great buildings and the variety of their architectural forms 
give to their contour a much greater interest, and impart to 
it a high degree of picturesqueness. 

^ To the real-estate owner the vertical railway has proved 
a priceless boon. The value of land in the crowded centres 



THE VERTICAL RAILWAY. 157 

of different branches of commei'ce has been materially en- 
hanced by it. In order to derive the highest available 
income from such property it has become incumbent on the 
land owner to build as far up toward the sky as brick and 
mortar, stone and iron would permit. Without the vertical 
railway this would have been impracticable, in a business 
point of view. As it is, the best offices are those that are 
highest up. They enjoy light, air and ventilation, and they 
are reached without the least inconvenience by that revolu- 
tionary but now indispensable device, the vertical railway. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LIGHTNING HARNESSED — TRAM WAYS. 

TT^ VERYBODY is watching with keen curiosity the experi- 
' ■* ments that are being made with the new motor, elec- 
tricity. It seems not only possible, but tolerably certain, that 
we shall not only harness the lightning to our street-cars, but 
make it run our lathes, sewing-machines, and other pieces 
of light machinery. It seems probable, too, that the discov- 
ery of so delicate and conveniently generated a motive-power 
will have the effect of stimulating the invention of aero- 
nautical vehicles, and the mapping out of the great currents 
of the atmosphere. In short, it looks as though electricity 
were to be the supplanter of steam as a motor, at least for 
many kinds of work; as if it would soon be brought into 
the house, furnishing every man his own motive power in a 
convenient place, and helping on the cause of woman's 
independence by enabling thousands of sewing women to 
work in their own homes, while a little wire coming in at 
the window, and a small, softly-purring electric motor 
together furnish their light, their cheap telephone, their 
needed power, and perhaps their heat. Already in Europe and 
America have boats, velocipedes, ploughs, sewing-machines, 
lathes, saw-mills, elevators, printing presses, machine shops, 
pumps, hammei's, electroplaters, rock borers, town water 
works, cranes, clothing-house cutting machines, dairies, I'ib- 
bon-sawing and wire-weaving machines, etc., been operated 
by electric motors (see Du Moncel, "Electricity as a Motive 



THE LIGHTKING HAKNESSED. 159 

Power," and accounts of the experiments of M. Marcel 
Deprez, in the London " Electric Review," for Api-il and May 
1884), and inventors keep devising new applications and 
perfecting the old ones. It would not be at all surprising if 
people now living should see the day when trains of flying 
cars propelled by electricity, shall ply between New York 
and London, between London and Yokohama, and between 
Yokohama and New York via San Francisco, and when " air 
lines" in the strict sense of the word shall be established in 
ten thousand directions over the surface of every country 
on the globe. The first electric air ship has already mounted 
into the atmosphere. On October 8, 1883, Gaston Tissan- 
dier and his brother made an ascension from Paris in their 
electric car. The balloon was ellipsoidal in shape, the car 
made of stout pieces of bamboo lashed together and fur- 
nished with a propeller, rudder, batteries, etc. The aero- 
nauts say that they proved the possibility of directing their 
course at will by means of their rudder, operated by elec- 
tric power. (See illustrated article in " Science " for Feb- 
ruary 8 and 15, 1884.) 

In the meantime, pending his more perfect installation as 
a navigator of the air, the proud genie of the clouds has been 
performing some very useful and humble labor upon a 
number of electrical railways in Europe and America. 
Professor Werner Siemens, of Berlin, will be known in the 
future as the father of the electric railway system, if there 
should ever be such a system ; for his electric railways have 
not only been the first successful roads of the kind, but his 
experiments have fully proved their economic and dynamic 
practicability. 

Professor C. G. Page, however, of Washington, District 
of Columbia, was the first to apply electricity to the rail- 



160 WOISTDERS AISTD CUEIOSITIES OE THE RAILWAY. 

road, having received from Congress an appropriation of 
twenty thousand dollars for his experiments. In 1860 he 
drew a car-load of passengers through the streets of Wash- 
ington with an electric locomotive travelling at the rate of 
twenty miles an hour; the electricity was generated by 
zinc and carbon batteries carried in the engine. The places 
of the steam cylindei's of the locomotive were occupied by 
helices. But the production of the motive power was found 
to be too expensive at that time, and the experiment was 
not repeated. 

The next move was by Siemens and Halske, of Berlin. 
In the year 1879 they operated at the Berlin Exhibition a 
small electric railway, about five hundred metres in length. 
The seats of the passenger cars were arranged back to back, 
settee fashion. An auxiliary conductor of the electric fluid 
was placed between the rails, and the current, passing along 
this from the dynamo, was taken up by a metal brush on 
the car, and, after passing through the motor, returned by 
way of the rails to the dynamo again. The locomotive used 
was but a tiny affair. There were two or three more of 
these pleasure, or model, roads built in Germany during 
1879 and 1880. The powerful current in the rails was 
somewhat dangerous. Once when a horse was crossing the 
track of the Berlin road he struck one of the rails with his 
iron shoe, and received a severe shock. The repairing of 
the rails also interrupted the current. To remedy this. 
Professor Siemens, afterward, at Paris and in other places, 
placed a metallic cable on each side of the track, and con- 
nected them with the moving train in such a way that 
whatever might be doing on the road, the electric circuit 
would always be maintained. For instance, in the case of 
the Charlottenburg and Spandau electric railroad, built in 



THE LIGHTNING HARNESSED. 161 

1881, the conducting wires were elevated on posts beside 
the track; little trollys, or contact carriages, ran along the 
wires in the air, being themselves connected by wire with 
the motor in the car, and following where the car led the 
way. 

The first electric railway for actual business traffic was 
constructed by Siemens and Halske in 1881, between Licht- 
erfelde and the Military College, "Berlin. The Siemens cars 
used here, and at the Paris Exhibition in the same year, are 
very different from those of the road of 1879, being in size 
and general resemblance quite like the ordinary European 
tram-car, each car having its own motor under the floor, 
and no locomotive being required. At the Paris Exhibition, 
just alluded to, the Siemens Electric railway extended from 
the Place de la Concorde to the interior of the Palais de 
rindustrie. One day a great uproar was heard in the Palais, 
and it was soon discovered that the electric car had broken 
loose, and that the attendants were trying to stop it by 
throwing ties and other obstructions in its way. But over 
them all it went hopping and bouncing until it brought up 
in the ticket- office. As it struck the wall the conductor 
snapped, and a flash of lightning lit up the scene. 

In 1882 Professor Siemens patented an electrical road- 
car, intended for use in places not rich enough to build a 
railway. The driver sits in front of this car and steers it 
by turning a wheel like that of a ship. The coach is stopped 
by simple pressure on a lever. 

There are, in all, some seven or eight electric railroads 
in Europe at the date of this writing. That in use in the 
royal coal mines near Zanckerode, Saxony, hauls eighty 
tons of coal at a speed of about seven miles an hour; fancy 
a horse attempting to do as much ! The Zanckerode loco- 
11 



162 WONDEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

motive receives its current from an overhead conductor. 
It is needless to say that for mines the electric motor is of 
peculiar value, being capable of service where the steam 
and smoke and noise of an ordinary locomotive would be 
intolerable. 

One of the most recent of the electric railroads is that con- 
structed by Messrs. Siemens, between Port Eush, the termi- 
nus of the Belfast and Northern Counties railroad, and Bush 
Mills, near the Giant's Causeway. It is six miles long; the 
power is taken from a neighboring waterfall by means of 
a simple turbine wheel, and the profits of the road come 
from visitors to the Causeway. 

The experiments of Professor Siemens have been followed 
in America by similar but independent ones, on the part of 
Mr. Thomas A. Edison, the inventor. His first electric road 
was that from his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, 
to Plainfield, a distance of three miles, the farmers giving 
him right of way over their land. His first electrical loco- 
motive resembled a large hand-car, and attained the speed 
of forty-two miles an hour. In February, 1882, an electri- 
cal passenger locomotive was built at the Edison Machine 
works in New York city. It is nine feet in height and fif- 
teen feet long, and somewhat resembles, in apjoearance, the 
ordinary steam locomotive. There is, of course, no smoke- 
stack, the place ordinarily filled by that object being, in 
the electric engine, devoted to the head-light. This loco- 
motive drew cars at a high rate of speed, at Menlo 
Park. The method of its working was, in general terms, 
as follows: the electricity was taken up from the track 
by the wheels of the locomotive, conveyed thence by metal 
brushes to conductors leading into the cab where the 
engineer stood and worked his levers. From the cab the 



THE LIGHTKIKG HARKESSED. 



163 




164 WONDEES AifD CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

current returned to other magnetized brushes placed near 
and on either side of an armature in the forward part of 
the locomotive. Now the armature ivas fixed on an axle, 
and when the magnetized brushes on one side attracted it, 
it had to revolve in that direction; when the brushes on the 
other side attracted it, it reversed its movement, thus pro- 
ducing forward and backward motion of the wheels of 
the locomotive. The electricity was generated in the 
laboratoiy of Mr. Edison, and was fed to the track by 
wires. Edison in the fall of 1883 was operating an electrical 
railway, two and a half miles long, from a point on the 
Pennsylvania railroad to Metuchen. The locomotive can 
draw a passenger car containing forty people, at the rate of 
twenty-nine miles an hour. The freight train carries thirty 
tons, at the rate of eight miles an hour. Since the dynamo- 
electrical machine is an absorber as well as a developer of 
electricity, the plan of Edison contemplates the establish- 
ment of stations at intervals of ten miles, where dynamo- ' 
electrical machines may be placed, to communicate their 
stored-up enei'gy to the rails, and thence to the apparatus 
in the locomotive. 

The electrical railway at the Chicago Exposition has 
been referred to on page 75. The train on this road 
was moved at will, in either direction, and was per- 
fectly under control. It carried, in all, twenty-six thousand 
eight hundred and five passengers. The auxiliary conductor 
was, in this case, laid in a trough between the rails (the 
patented invention of Edison and Fields). 

Another of these electro-motive roads is now in oper- 
ation at Greenville, New Jersey; it is one-eighth of a mile 
long. The experiments are under the direction of Mr. Leo 
Daft. 



THE LIGHTiraSTG HARNESSED. 165 

In the fall of 1883, a Daft electric locomotive, called the 
" Ampere," was in practical use on the Saratoga, Mt. 
McGregor and Lake George railroad — a line seven miles 
in length, extending from Saratoga up Mt. McGregor, at 
a gi'adient of ninety-three feet in a mile. This was the first 
utilization of an electric locomotive in the drawing of ordi- 
nary passenger coaches for practical and public purposes. 
The experiment was a complete success — the little engine 
moving off easily with its load of seventy passengers, amid 
the loud cheers of the crowd, whose scepticism as to the 
abilities of the motor was completely removed. The re- 
cently formed Massachusetts Electric Power Company has 
also successfully tried a Daft electric locomotive upon a 
railroad near Boston, and proposes to introduce the power 
on an extensive scale. In Mr. Daft's " low tension" system 
the danger to man and beast from contact with the electri- 
fied rails is entirely obviated. When the rails are charged 
with a current strong enough to move a whole train of cars, 
the ends of copper wires attached to the positive and nega- 
tive rail can be placed against the tongue and scarcely a 
tremor is felt. The current in the rails of the Daft road, as 
in those of all other electric railroads, admits of cars passing 
in either direction, indifferently, over the same track. The 
Daft motors have attained a speed of seventy miles an 
hour, and have ascended grades of two thousand feet to the 
mile. As the author has elsewhere stated, one of the 
curious things discovered by Mr. Daft is that the electric 
current itself exerts a tractive or adhesive power, making 
the wheels bite the rails more firmly. But a more wonder- 
ful thing still is the way in which the adhesive power of the 
wheel is increased by electro-magnets. Placed beneath the 
car are one or more powerful magnets, which are not 



166 WONDERS A]SrD CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. 

ordinarily in use; but whenever the motoneer (or engineer) 
wishes to climb a steep grade, he turns a lever and switches 
off a part of his current into these extra magnets. They at 
once exert a tremendous pull downward upon the rail, and 
thus bind it and the wheels closely together, so that the 
adhesive power of a ten-ton electric ^locomotive is greater 
than that of a forty-ton steam locomotive, and most of the 
wear and tear is avoided.* 

Almost all the electric railways at present employ sta- 
tionary steam-engines for supplying the mechanical power 
operating their dynamo-electric friction machines, or elec- 
tric current generators. It is certain that the problem 
of thus converting the latent energy of coal into elec- 
tricity has been successfully solved in an economic point of 
view (the economics of the railway, that is to say), for it 
has been shown, again and again, that the cost of burning 
coal under the boiler of a locomotive is one-third greater 
than burning it under the boiler of a stationary engine and 
converting it into an electric current. (See " The Elec- 
tric Review," for February 28, 1884, and " The New York 
Tribune," for February 25, 1884.) So also in other indus- 
tries, the saving in insurance rates, heat, dirt, noise, danger, 
loss of space, salary of licensed engineer, and cost of engines 
and boilers will be so great by the employment of electro- 
motors, and the economy of distribution by wires from 
central stations so considerable, that it really looks as if the 
hour of doom had struck for steam, or, at any rate, that its 
uses will be more limited. 

In London, several new electric railways are in process of 
construction. One of these is to extend under the Thames 

* See an account of the Daft experiments in " Harper's Weekly," for Sep- 
tember 22, 1883. 



THE LIGHTNING HARNESSED. 



167 




168 WOIfDEES AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

through a new tunnel, from Charing Cross station to 
Waterloo station. Messrs. Siemens Brothers are the con- 
tractors for this railway. 

Various companies are being formed in the United States 
for the introduction of electric motors upon horse railroads 
and elevated railroads. A company has also been formed 
in Paris for the introduction of electro- motors on tramways. 
On September 6, 1883, an ordinary horse-car was propelled 
by the Faure-Sellon-Volckmar accumulators of the French 
company for a distance of thirty miles through the principal 
thoroughfares of Paris, and during the trial of six hours no 
accident occurred through the frightening of horses. Indeed, 
their freedom from noise, dust, and sparks, is one of the 
chief attractions of these novel motors. They are also rec- 
ommended by their cheapness. For elevated city tramways 
they have the advantage of being free from smoke and cin- 
ders. If run upon longer railroads, the fact that each car 
contains its own motor would, perhaps, make the use of single 
passenger cars advisable, so that our trunk lines and local 
lines would resemble street-car roads; in such event, the 
results of collision, as has been suggested, would not be so dis- 
astrous as at present, and the wear and tear of rails would 
be less. " Travelling at the present time," says Lieutenant 
Bradley A. Fiske, " is a very luxurious thing. But what will 
it be when we can sit at an open window and glide along 
at the rate of sixty miles an hour, without the fear of smoke 
or cinders; when electric bells are at hand leading to the 
inaccessible retreats where porters now secrete themselves 
safe from discovery; when we can start from our homes to 
take a car for Boston, as we now start to take an elevated 
train, knowing that if we miss one car, another will soon be 
at hand; when electric incandescent lamps, which cannot, in 



TRAMWAYS. 



169 



case of accident, scatter burning oil in all directions, shall 
fill the car with a mild and steady light; when despatches 
can be received on board a train in motion as well as at an 
office ; when the cars shall be heated and meals prepared by- 
electric stoves, whicb cannot, in case of accident, set fire to 
the car — all the electricity needed for these and number- 
less other purposes being derived from the same convenient 
source — the conductor carrying the current which fur- 
nishes the propelling power?"* 

From electrical tramways for cities, we may pass to a con- 
sideration of other kinds of city passenger railways.f The 




(By courtesy of Mr. John Stephenson, New York.) 
THE FIRST STREET CAR IN THE WORLD. 



first street railway in the world was the New York and Har- 
lem, incorporated 1831. The first cars were run in Novem- 

* "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1884. 

tThe authorities that have been consulted for this, the first full, account of 
the origin of city street railways, are D. K. Clark's work on " Tramways," Lon- 
don, Crosby, Lockwood and Company, 1878, and supplementary volume to 
same, 1882; F. Serafon's "Etude sur les Chemins de Fer," etc., Paris, Dunod, 
1872; Martha Lamb's "History of New York," II, 721; London " Times," Au- 
gust 31, 1860; "First Street Railway Banquet in the Old World," by George 
Francis Train, Liverpool, Lee, Nightingale and Company, 1860; W. H. 
Brown's "History of the First Locomotives in America" ; and various miscella- 
neous journals, old guide books, and old gentlemen. 



170 WOISTDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

ber, 1832, from Prince street to Harlem Bridge. These cars 
were curious structures, from the point of view of people 
of this generation — being very much like the stage coaches 
of the time, each having three compartments with side 
doors; there were leather springs, and the driver sat on an 
elevated seat in front, and moved the brake with his foot. 
The car represented in the cut was one of the first two that 
were built for the Harlem line, and was made by John 
Stephenson. The opening of the road, says W. H. Brown, 
excited a good deal of interest, and the streets along the 
route were crowded with curious spectators. The bright 
new car, the " John Mason," led the way, and the ribbons 
we»e handled in gallant style by a well known knight of 
the whip, named Lank O'Dell, who always drove a pair of 
gray horses. Both the cars that figured on the occasion 
contained city officials (the mayor and members of the city 
council) and invited guests. It was thought by many that 
there would be great difficulty in stopping the cars quickly 
enough to avoid accidents to street vehicles. But the vice- 
president of the road, being very desirous of convincing 
people how ungrounded were their fears in this regard, de- 
termined to give them ocular proof of the ease with which 
the cars could be brought to a dead stop. So on the trial 
day, he posted himself with a number of witnesses some- 
where about the corner of the Bowery and Bond street, 
having previously ordered the drivers of the two cars to 
watch for his signal, and then stop the cars with all the 
haste they could. Now, when O'Dell came dashing along, 
and saw the signal, he easily brought up the car, since he 
had previously had some experience in hauling materials 
for the road; but the hackman who drove the second car, 
forgetting the lever of the brake, only drew hard on his 



TRAMWAYS. • 171 

lines and shouted, " Wljoa! " But in vain; his car slid in- 
exorably forward, and the tongue went crashing through 
the rear end of the "John Mason," causing the dignified in- 
mates to beat an unceremonious retreat, amid the laughter 
of the bystanders. No one was hurt, however, and soon 
the triumphal train moved on to Harlem Bridge. This is 
the first street-car collision on record, and it occasioned a 
good deal of merriment among the citizens, and consider- 
able annoyance to the vice-president; since for several days 
afterward, the roguishly inclined among his friends would 
imitate his attitude and gesture on that unlucky street- 
corner, and raise their arms for him to stop, as he had done 
to the car-drivers. The fares were paid in silver sixpences 
of the old Spanish currency then in circulation. In 1837 
the road temporarily succumbed to steam cars, but resumed 
work in 1845. The old Harlem Eailroad Corporation 
still owns the right of way through the Bowerj^ and Fourth 
avenue, and receives a large income from the street rail- 
road, as well as from the Hudson River and the New Haven 
railroads, in return for a cession to them of right of way. 

The early street railways of New York were not very 
popular at first, and were for a time disused. Much of their 
unpopularity was doubtless due to the objectionable nature 
of the rail employed; it projected too much above the sur- 
face, and was injurious to street vehicles. The first rails 
were made with grooves, or iron gutters, to guide the 
wheels. The low step-rail, now everywhere in vogue, was 
invented and first used in Philadelphia in 1855. In New 
York the street railway was revived about 1852, by M, 
Loubat, a French engineer, who constructed the Sixth 
Avenue railway in that year. At nearl}^ the same date 
the Second, Third, and Eighth avenue lines received their 



172 WONDERS AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

charters. In 1853 the Cambridge (Massachusetts) horse 
railroad was chartered, and the Metropolitan of Boston at 
about the same time (Charles L. Light, engineer). The 
first car was run out of Boston on the Cambridge road, in 
April, 1856. By the year 1858 horse railroads were in 
use in all the large cities of the United States. 

When M. Loubat returned to Paris in 1853, he at once 
introduced the new American street car to his fellow Paris- 
ians, laying a line along the Avenue de la Reine. The 
French at first called the new roads chemins de fer Ameri- 
cains, or, for short, V Americain ; now they call them "tram- 
ways." 

In 1860 that eccentric character, George Francis Train, 
introduced the American street-car into England, the first 
line opened by him being in Bii'kenhead, opposite Liverpool. 
The cars were built by the Stephenson firm in America. 
The line ran from Woodside Ferry to the entrance of Birk- 
enhead Park, a distance of one mile and a quarter. The 
cars seated twenty-four passengers inside, and the same 
number on the railed-in top. In his curious pamphlet on 
the celebration of the opening of the road (August 30, 
1860), Mr. Train gives an illustration of one of the cars, by 
which you perceive that there were queer-looking conical 
brooms hanging downward in front of each wheel, to 
sweep obstructions from the track. Mr. Train gave a 
grand dejeuner on the opening day; the invitation cards 
were exquisitely lithographed in gold and colors, and ivere 
sent hij him to all the croumed heads of Europe, and to all the 
eminent people of Great Britain! In 1861 Mr. Train opened 
a street-car railway in Bayswater, London, after encounter- 
ing very determined opposition. It was argued by the 
London city officials that the rails would tear off the wheels 



TEAMWAYS. 173 

of vehicles, and that it would be impossible to repair the 
streets without interrupting traffic on the tramways. But 
the street-car is now very popular in England, as it is also 
in nearly all other countries of the world. There are street- 
cars, e.g., in Moscow, Leipzig, Naples, Oporto, New Zealand, 
Bombay, Java, Australia, India, Japan, the Cape of Good 
Hope, Chili, Pei-u and Buenos Ayres. The last-named city 
had, in 1872, seventy miles of street railways. It was at one 
time the custom in Buenos Ayres for trumpeters to ride in 
advance of the street-cars in order to warn off other vehicles 
and prevent collisions. Sydney, in Australia, has forty miles 
of street-car tracks, and the motive power is steam. Steam 
and compressed air are used as street-car motors in several 
cities in the world; but they have not yet come into general 
use, owing chiefly to the difficulty of keeping the low rails 
used in crowded thoroughfares clear of ice and snow and 
the greasy slush of the street; for a locomotive wheel only 
spins around on a slippery track.* The best street locomo- 
tives are made by Merryweather, in England. As is well 
known, there are several railways in Chicago and San Fran- 
cisco which are operated by continuous cables and stationary 
steam engines. The cables are some eight inches under- 
ground, and when it is desired to propel a car the conductor 
lets down through a narrow continuous slot a kind of 
" grip " that seizes fast on the moving cable, and the car 
is drawn along at a uniform rate of speed. The cable rail- 
road on the New York and Brooklyn bridge is a novel affair, 
exciting as much of curiosity as the vast Karnak bridge 

*Mr. Daft's device of the electro-magnets alluded to in this chapter would 
seem to offer the very means needed for keeping the wheels firmly to a track 
charged with his low-tension current. The current of one hundred and fifty 
volts is perfectly harmless to man and beast; a tension of from three hundred 
to twenty-two thousand volts is dangerous, but that of one hundred and fifty 
only causes a pleasant tingling In the nerves. 



174 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OE THE RAILWAY. 

itself does of wonder. The continuous cable runs in the 
form of an oval, travelling rapidly over large pulleys. The 
grip used is what is called a rolling-grip (the invention of 
Colonel William H. Paine) and consists of four horizontally- 
placed grooved wheels and other mechanism, all located 
under the centre of the car. When the brakeman turns 
his brake-wheel, the grip wheels under the car begin to 
revolve in the same direction that the cable moves, and at 
the same time they begin to hug the cable tight enough to 
draw along the car. When tjie revolutions of the car- 
wheels proper reach a speed equal to that of the moving 
cable the grip-wheels no longer revolve, but are fastened 
tight to the cable by the brakeman's wheel-and-lever appar- 
atus, thus drawing the car up the incline of the bridge. 
By a system of switches at each end of the bridge, the cars 
are kept moving round, passing over on one side, and then 
(switching and reversing the direction) back on the other 
side. At the date of this writing a double cable road is 
constructing in New York city, from One Hundred and 
Twenty-Fifth to One Hundred and Eighty-Seventh streets, 
a distance of about three and a half miles along the Hudson 
Eiver, beyond Central Park. 

When rapid transit is desired in great cities, only two 
methods of attaining it are possible: you must either have 
a railroad underground, or a railroad in the air. New 
York has found the elevated railroad successful, and at the 
present time the four double-track lines of the Manhattan 
Elevated Railroad Company serve for the passage of three 
thousand five hundred trains a day, and the transportation 
of eighty-six million passengers in a year — some three 
hundred thousand a day. 

In London high brick viaducts are used by some of the 



TRAMWAYS. 175 

trunk-lines entering the city. The London and Greenwich 
Company's viaduct is fifty-three miles long, has one thou- 
sand arches, and cost one million three hundred thousand 
dollars per mile ; it has not proved a paying investment 
The viaduct plan has recently been tried in America by 
the Pennsylvania railroad, which has constructed a brick 
viaduct of considerable length, to enable cars to penetrate 
to its grand new terminal station in the heart of Philadel- 
phia.* 

The New York elevated roads are designed only for pas- 
sengers, and the light trains therefore run with complete 
safety upon the branched iron pillars that support the track. 
Up to 1882 not a single passenger had been injured through 
the fault of the elevated railroad company. The origin of 
the road was in 1866. In 1867 the Legislature of New 
York accepted the plans of Charles T. Harvey out of over 
forty others that were presented to it. The inventor was 
allowed to erect an illustrative section of his road from 
the Battery through Greenwich street to Twenty-Ninth 
street, and if the road proved satisfactory to the Governor 
and his commission, the inventor was to be allowed to 
extend it to Harlem Eiver; if it did not prove so, it must 
come down, and to cover damages that might result to prop- 
erty, Harvey was obliged to file a penal bond of one million 
dollars with the city comptroller. The road was built, 
however, upon these severe terms. The first motive power 
consisted of endless wire ropes worked by stationary engines. 
But in 1870 the company failed, and was supplanted by the 
New York Elevated Railroad Company, which put small 
locomotives on the tracks, and by energetic administration 

* For a description of some early elevated roads compare Chapter III, page 
33, and Chapter VII, pages 115, 116. 



176 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

established the success of the undertaking. Most of the 
original road is now merged in the roads of the Manhattan 
Company. 

Nearly everybody disliked the overhead railways at first. 
But the disagreeable impressions produced are soon lessened 
by familiarity, and the roads have come to be regarded as a 
necessary evil, even by most of their worst enemies. The key 
of popular opinion is struck in the following playful words 
of a writer in the "American Architect" (1883); he has 
been exhausting the vocabulary of his scorn and dislike upon 
the elevated roads for their damaging effect upon certain 
noble architecture in their neighborhood, yet concludes his 
remarks thus: " But let us shake off the general dustiness 
we have gathered by the walk along the substructure of the 
road, forget the holes burned in our coats by hot cinders, 
overlook the few grease-splashes upon our summer hat, and 
forgive the brakeman who found amusement in squirting 
tobacco juice down upon us, and let us go up and follow the 
unthinking populace in encouraging the monopoly. Oh, 
how delightful! Bless me, here we are at old Trinity 
again! I take it all back; let architecture and property 
rights and personal privileges and past associations perish, 
so long as we can so fly through the air without following 
suit." 

Note. — Probably the most richly humorous bit of elevated rail- 
way literature in existence is to be found in the "Report of the 
Select Committee of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts 
on a Rail Way from Boston to Albany, 1827." There is such a pro- 
vincial and rural smack about this whole report, such naive igno- 
rance, and such a school-boy style of composition, as to render it 
immortally funny to all railroad men and inventors. Among the 
pieces of knowledge graciously imparted by "your committee "to 
the members of the Legislature is a description of "a single Rail 



TRAMWAYS. 177 

Way, " invented by Colonel Henry Sargent, of Boston. His single rail 
track, according to the Report, was to be elevated upon posts about 
three feet above the common road. " Sidelings " were to be made at 
suitable intervals. " The rims of the wheel are to be made concave 
to keep them upon the rail. The carriage has two bodies, one on 
each side of the rail, and extending down with iron braces from the 
wheels. The balance and weight are below the Rail." So far, so 
good ; we have here a road bearing a general resemblance to the ele- 
vated railways of Mr. Meigs and General Le Roy Stone (compare 
Chapter VII, " Bicycle Railways " ). But study carefully what is said 
about the "sidelings " : "Your committee " offer the following objec- 
tions to the adoption by the State of Colonel Sargent's invention : 
His railway "would incommode the passing and repassing travel. 
Each carriage must stop, and one or both the drivers must alight, 
and open, or swing, a portion of the Rail from the direct line to the 
sideling, and then return it again, like a gate, to its place. In 
returning, the same process must be repeated. If two lines should 
be constructed, the one for the going and the other for the returning 
travel, still the same inconvenience would occur where one carriage 
was to move faster than another. They must both stop till one 
passed the other in the maamer before mentioned. A single Rail 
Way, by being elevated several feet, would incommode the country 
like "a fence passing through the villages, and like a gate or bar 
across every road that it passed. And if the movable portion of the 
rail were left partly open at any time, as might often be the case, the 
carriage would be very likely to run off, an accident which in many 
cases might be serious; besides the great difficulty there would 
always be in replacing a loaded carriage upon an elevated Rail." 
13 



CHAPTER XI, 

THE FUNCTIONS OP THE RAILWAY IN WAR. 

rr^HE functions of the railway in time of war are 
-*- peculiar and delicate, and are deserving of deeper 
study on the part of statists and military men than they 
have yet received. The through railway lines of a country, 
with their telegraphic wires, may be regarded as so many 
trunk-nerves, overlapping — with their diverging branches 
— the dividing lines of the different states, and forming a 
medium of communication of the greatest efficiency in time 
of harmonious cooperation. Railroads both bind and sever. 
They strengthen a democracy like that of the United States 
by the thorough and rapid interchange of ideas they effect 
between distant and differing populations, and at the same 
time they lessen the danger of Caesarian concentration of 
armed soldiers on distant points, owing to the ease with 
which they can be rendered useless,* but for the same reason 
they afford a tempting opportunity for the almost instant 
paralysis of the business of the country, in case of an 
uprising of the disaffected or baser elements of society. 
This last danger is a grave one. Witness the ominous 
railroad riots of 1877. f 

* Compare the causeways of ancient Mexico, and the ease with which the 
army of Cortez was well-nigli annihilated by the cutting of tliese, and by the 
destruction of tlie bridges connecting their different parts. 

tTlie great railroad strikes and riots of 1B77 lasted from the middle of July 
to the first of August, and spread over fourteen States, in all of which there was 
more or less serious stoppage of business and destruction of property by 
armed rioters. United States Regulars and State Militia united their forces in 
the suppression of what threatened to be a communistic reign of terror, but not 

178 



THE FUN'CTIOIfS OF THE RAILWAY IN WAR. 179 

In formal war, too, railroads form a very precarious 
reliance when they are within reach of the enemy. In July, 
1870, a few Prussian lancei'S crossed into French territory 
and blew up a viaduct of the railway by which communica- 
tion between the different portions of the French army was 
kept up; and, as a consequence, MacMahon did not receive at 
Worth the support he had expected, and was thereby seriously 
crippled. So the defeat of Bull Run was due to a brigade 
of soldiers brought to the scene of action from the Shenan- 
doah Valley by the Manassas railroad. Colonel Hamley, in 
his work on " The Operations of War," says that an invader 
should always dix'ect his attack on a part of the enemy's 
country whei'e there are few railways, since their effect is, on 
the whole, in favor of the defender. A flank movement by 
rail is especially dangerous, if the enemy can reach the 
road, since he can seriously cripple even a large force by 
attacking small sections of it at once while it is en route. 

On the other hand, supply railways are of inestimable 
value to an invading force, enabling it to be kept in close 
communication with provisions and munitions of war, how- 
ever far away it may be from the points where these are 
stored. Formerly, it was necessary for an army to remain 
stationary for a time while depots of fresh supplies were 
being formed in the rear. But now the railway keeps even 
step with the army in its march, and, if not liable to inter- 
ruption by the enemy, furnishes ample supplies for the daily 

before serious damage had been done, the Pennsylvania railroad alone losing 
about five million dollars by the riots at Pittsburgh. The four great trunk lines 
from the Atlantic seaboard to the West were for several days in the power of 
the strikers, and scenes of violence were enacted in many of the Western 
States, this side of the lyTississippi River. (See Allan Pinkerton's " Strikes, 
Communists, Tramps, and Detectives," New York, Carleton, 1878; J. A. Dacus's 
"Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States," Chicago, Palmer, 1877; and 
"History of the Railroad Riots of 1877," by James D. McCabe, alias Edward 
W. Martin, Philadelphia, National Publishing Company, 1877.) 



180 WON'DEES AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

use of the largest bodies of soldiers. It has been calculated 
that one day's supply for an army of eighty-five thousand 
men can be conveyed four hundred miles by one railway 
train in forty hours, and the same amount of supplies con- 
veyed by the common roads M^ould require five hundred 
draught horses, and from twenty-five to thirty days' time. 

During the Georgia campaign, General Sherman was 
linked to his base of supplies by a single line of railroad, 
and it so supplied his great army of one hundred thousand 
men that not a soldier was for a single day without suitable 
clothing and ammunition, and neither man nor beast ever 
lacked food for twenty-four hours at a time. 

In 1870, when the Germans were besieging Paris, a 
single railway fed the whole army of two hundred thousand 
men, and also brought up the siege materials and reen- 
forcements at the rate of two or three thousand a day. In 
the Italian war of 1859, the strade ferrate proved of great 
value to the French. On one occasion French troops arrived 
by train from Genoa, just in time to turn the scale of battle 
and secure the victory for their arm^'". It seems odd to 
think of a general ordering a special train in order that he 
may be in time for an engagement, but such things have 
happened. 

The facilities for the rapid mobilization and concentration 
of troops have been increased six-fold by this magnificent 
instrument, the railway. "Victory is in the legs of soldiers," 
said Napoleon. How fortunate it was that the great Corsi- 
can had ended his career before the introduction of rail- 
ways; for, with such a beautiful toy in his hands, his splen- 
did strategic genius would perhaps have enabled him to 
enslave all Europe, for a time, at least. Think how field- 
railways would have changed the relations of armies at 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE EAILWAY IN WAR, 181 

Waterloo. But Napoleon and Wellington were no better 
off than Eameses II in the matter of transportation of 
troops. In these times, the railway and the telegraph have 
made of a great battle a still more scientific game of chess 
than it was in the days of the European generals just named. 
Eailroads not only save the long and terrible marches 
which kill more men than die on the field of battle, but 
they also lessen the expense of a war by hastening its issue. 
They permit of the rapid disposal of large bodies of pris- 
oners, and, above all, they admit of the rapid removal of 
the wounded to clean and roomy quarters. Napoleon said 
that he preferred a dead soldier to a wounded one. The 
wounded are an encumbrance to an army, both during and 
after an engagement, and the superior comforts to be 
attained at a distance from the jar and clash of war, make 
the function of the railway, in this respect, a blessed one. 
During the Franco-Prussian war, very few German soldiers 
died from wounds received; for they were removed at once 
to cheerful hospitals in the interior of Germany, where the 
feeling that they were at home, and the home-nursing, 
wrought wonders for them in a short time. The hospital 
cars that carried them from the battle-field contained straw 
mattresses resting on boards and springs; there was an 
attendant in each car, and attached to each train were a 
cook, a surgeon or two, an apothecary with his medicine 
chest, and an officer in charge of the whole train. During 
our own civil war, the Sanitary Commission carried two 
hundred and twenty- five thousand wounded men to the 
rear in hospital cars. During the Tennessee campaigns, 
the Commission bought a train of cars of its own. Its 
" I'ailway ambulances " were fitted up with elastic beds, and 
all the appliances of a regular hospital. The steamboats of 



182 WOKDEES AKD CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers were also used for 
the same purpose. 

The Germans are far in advance of other nations in the 
scientific study of the functions and possibilities of the rail- 
way in war. Previous to the struggle of 1870-71, their 
soldiers had been trained to embark and disembark from 
the cars with rapidity and precision. There was, and still 
is, a railway section of the general staff, the duty of which 
in time of war, is to acquire a precise knowledge of all the 
railroads of the hostile country, and of the best means of 
crippling or gaining possession of them. In time of peace, 
it is the duty of the railway staff to study the railways of 
Germany, and of foreign countries with whom she may at 
some future time be at war. In 1870 the consequence of 
this system was, that at the end of four days after the 
order for the mobilization of the troops, the most minute 
arrangements, down to the hour and minute, for the depart- 
ure of trains and troops had been made, and forty trains a 
day began the transportation of troops and supplies to the 
frontier, where, in the course of a fortnight, every portion 
of the vast army, down to the grave-diggers, had arrived 
and was in its place. 

Then, by means of the railways, each corps of the Ger- 
man army was connected with and fed by its own local 
district, thus rendering all Germany the source of supply 
for the troops. In strong contrast with this system was the 
state of the French army. In France all was confusion. 
Their supplies were stored up in magazines, and the most 
contradictory orders were received in regard to the disposi- 
tion of them. Their railways were the scene of obstruction 
and confused and aimless movements, while those of Ger- 
many " were acting with the unity and certainty of full 



THE FUlSrCTIOlsrS OF THE EAILWAY IN WAE. 183 

rivers flowing onward to the sea." * A good instance of 
the value to the German army of its railway corps is noted 
by historians of the Franco- Prussian war. When the gar- 
rison of the fortress of Metz interrupted railway traffic on 
the line from Saarbruck through Pont-a-Mousson to Pai'is, 
and by Nancy to Strasbourg, G-eneral Von Moltke directed 
a railroad twenty-five miles long to be built, uniting the 
Metz and Saarbruck and the Metz and Paris lines. Three 
thousand miners working night and day, amid the roar of 
cannon, built the road in half a week or less, and the rail- 
way communication of the German army was reestablished. 
Since the Franco-Prussian war the Germans have been 
paying more attention than ever before to the discipline of 
their army in railway tactics. They have recently added a 
railway regiment to their permanent army oi'ganization. 
It is the duty of this regiment both to construct railways 
and destroy them, and to engage in practical railway ser- 
vice. The government has appropriated a railroad forty 
miles in length for the purpose of practising the men, 
although the road also carries freight and passengers like 
any ordinary road. The sergeants serve as conductors, and 
the privates as brakemen, engineers and firemen. Those 
not serving on the train are kept at work lajang track, 
tearing it up, and in every way learning both how to 
utilize railroads and how to render them unfit for use to 
others.f 

*The author has noted that, as early as 1866, M. Lonis Gregori, in a paper 
published in the " Revne des Deux Mondes," had suggested at length to the 
French people the formation of a military railway organization. Well would 
it have been for poor France if she had but listened to her counsellor ! 

tFor more detailed and technical information concerning the influence of 
railways in modifying the movements and status of armies, the following works 
may be consulted: "Der Krieg im Jahre 1870," von M. Annenkoflf, Berlin, 1871 ; 
"Das Train-communications und VerpflegswesenvomoperativenStandpunkte," 
von H. Obauer und E. R. Von Gutenberg, Wien, 1871 ; " La deuxieme Armee 



184 WONDEES AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

To recur to our own civil war. Although neither the 
Confederate nor the Union troops had been previously 
drilled in railway manipulation and tactics, yet their gen- 
erals soon discovered the great strategic importance of the 
iron roads, and the necessity for railwaj'- corps in the 
armies. Many of the most exciting episodes of the war 
arose from the attempt of one side or the other to control 
important lines of railway. The chief object of General 
Sherman in his march to the sea was to cut and destroy the 
railroads in the enemy's country, and thus prevent the 
rapid transference of the seat of war from Richmond to a 
point further south. He accomplished his object, and the 
long lines of ash-heaps, charred wrecks of bridges, and 
twisted ties he left behind, played an important part in the 
series of movements that struck the death-blow to the con- 
federacy. The South had no time for forging iron rails, 
even if she had had the shops and tools; and during the 
latter days of the contest the rails on southern roads had 
become terribly used up from long service. Those twisted 
by Sherman's men could not be repaired except by special 
machinery; the loss to the South was irreparable. 

During the Atlanta campaign of Sherman, says Jacob 
D. Cox, the railroad repairs of the army were under the 
management of a construction corps of two thousand men, 
and there was also a large railroad transportation depart- 
ment. Their work was of the highest importance; the 
interchangeable timbers of wooden truss bridges were 
always kept prepared in the rear, and when a bridge was 
burned by the enemy it was restored as if by magic. At 
Chattahoochee and other places great trestle-work bridges 

de la Loire," par le General Chanzy, Paris, 1871 ; " La Guerre en Province pen- 
dant le Si^ge de Paris, 1870, 1871," Paris, 1871. 



THE PUKCTIOHS OF THE EAILWAY IN WAR. 185 

hundreds of feet long and nearly a hundred feet high were 
woven together with the rapidity with which an ordinary 
pioneer corps bridges a petty ravine. Nothing disheartened 
the Confederates more in this campaign than to hear the 
whistle of the locomotive in the rear of the Union troops, 
within a few hours after they had heard that the railways 
had been broken so as to cause the Yankees great delay and 
annoyance. 

The story of that thrilling episode of the war, the 
" Capture of a Locomotive," has several times been told.* 
Twenty-two picked young men in the army of General 0. M. 
Mitchell band themselves together in romantic secrecy for a 
desperate and daring adventure, which is no less a feat than 
proceeding in disguise within the enemy's lines, seizing a 
locomotive and car, and then, in rapid flight toward Chatta- 
nooga and their own lines, burning behind them the 
bridges of the railroad, and so crippling the hostile force that 
General Mitchell shall be enabled to seize both Chattanooga 
and Atlanta, and thus hold the key to east Tennessee. The 
chosen band separate to meet at a certain rendezvous on the 
railroad; they all arrive but two; enter a train loaded with 
Confederate troops and ammunition; and when they reach 
Marietta, and the engineer', fireman and other employes of 
the train have all entered a restaurant for dinner, boldly 
walk forward, climb into the baggage-car and engine, which 
they have quietly uncoupled fi'om the rest of the train, and 
before anybody knows what has happened are thundering 
away along the track. The astonished conductor pursues 
in a hand-car, reaches the next station, boards a passenger 
train, and is after them with a volunteer force. And then 

* For instance, in " Harper's Monthly," acd in the book of Rev. Wm. Pitten- 
ger, published by the Lippincotts. 



186 WOKDEKS AND CUKIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

begins one of the most exciting chases on record. Two of 
the Union men are accomplished engineers; the remainder 
are concealed in the baggage-car. The engineer and his 
fireman give out at every station that they are carrying 
powder in a special train to Beauregard's army; they cut 
the telegraph wires as they go, and tear up the track at 
intervals; successfully pass a train coming in the opposite 
direction, but not before waiting a fatal half hour and more 
for it; from time to time see the pursuing train close 
behind them, and try in vain to stop it by dropping ties on 
the track and tearing up rails; the men in the baggage-car 
chopping up the sides of their car for fuel; and after a wild, 
mad I'ace of one hundred miles being obliged at last to take 
to the woods owing to the fuel and water of the engine hav- 
ing given out. It happened that there was a regimental 
muster near the place where they abandoned their locomo- 
tive, and the planters were present with their bloodhounds 
and horses. The fugitives wxre therefore all captured and 
thrust into a foul negro prison. Andrews, the leader, was 
hung at once; seven more soon followed him. And the 
order came for the execution of the rest. But they gagged 
their jailer, overpowered the guard, and escaped by miracu- 
lous good fortune — two to a United States gunboat on the 
Gulf, and others to the Union lines. Six were, however, 
recaptured, and were afterward exchanged. When they 
arrived at Washington they were given a reception by 
President Lincoln, received each a medal, had their money 
arrearages made up to them, besides receiving each a purse 
of a hundred dollars and a furlough for the purpose of vis- 
iting their friends. In significant contrast with this treat- 
ment was that received by the brave and energetic con- 
ductor. Fuller, who pursued the dare-devils who had run 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE EAILWAY IN WAR. 187 




188 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OE THE RAILWAY. 

away with his locomotive, and handsomely captured them 
all to a man. For this service he got a vote of thanks from 
the Georgia Legislature, and the promise of a medal, which 
he never received! 

There is doubtless many another as thrilling adventure 
as this that might be told of the days of the war. And 
there are probably many new functions of the railway as a 
military agent still to be thought of and set in operation. 
One of the most curious uses to which a railway train has 
been put in war was that devised by the English in their 
Egyptian campaign of 1882. They fitted up an Armored 
Railway Train as a kind of moving fort. It was operated 
on the railway near Alexandria. Six car-trucks containing 
soldiers were furnished with iron shields at the sides; the 
locomotive had a car preceding it, and had its sides pro- 
tected with rows of sand-bags. One of the cars carried a 
crane; a Nordenfeldt gun looked over the bows, and three 
Gatlings projected from the rear of the train, which car- 
ried, in addition to what has been mentioned, mines, electric 
apparatus, and appliances for laying down and destroying 
tracks. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LUXURIES OP TRAVEL. 

TF that querulous old Bostonian, Mr. Breck, whose com- 
-'- plaints about the unseemly mingling of castes in the 
railway coaches of his day have been quoted on a previous 
page in this volume, were living at this time, he would 
have no need to harp on that particular theme any longer. 
His aristocratic tastes would be abundantly gratified by the 
fix'st-class cars of nearly every country into which he would 
be apt to travel. The Russian saloon-cars have already been 
described (page 101). The ordinary Wagner and Pullman 
coaches of America, with their luxurious appointments, are 
too well known to the readers of this day to need descrip- 
tion. But how Mr. Breck would have pitied the mental 
state of the man who should have told him that in fifty years 
from the time when he wrote his little Jeremiad, people 
would travel on steam trains containing a smoking car, 
parlor-dining-room-and-sleeping car, kitchen, wine-cellar 
and bathing-rooms.* 

The height of luxury in travel has been reached by 
royalty in Europe and nabobism in America. Contrast the 
travelling coach of Napoleon I with the railway train of 
his imperial nephew. 

Bonaparte's carriage (used by him in the Russian cam- 
paign of 1815) was captured by the English at Waterloo, 

* On some few railway lines in the United States, bathing-cars have been 
introduced, containing alcoves furnished with bath-tubs and other suitable 
appurtenances. 



190 WONDERS AiSTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and now suffers the ignominious fate of being placed on 
exhibition in Madame Tussaud's wax-work show in London. 
The coach is a model of compactness. The bedstead is of 
polished steel, and there is a projection in front made to 
receive the feet of the occupant when he was reclining. 
Over the front windows is a roller-blind, which, when pulled 
out, admitted air and excluded rain. The secretaire was 
fitted up for Napoleon by Marie Louise with nearly one hun- 
dred articles, including a magnificent breakfast service of 
gold, a gold wash-basin, spirit lamp, perfumes, etc. In a 
recess at the bottom of the toilet-box were two thousand gold 
napoleons; on the top of this box were the imperial ward- 
robe, a writing desk, maps, telescopes, arms, a liquor case, 
and a lai'ge silver chronometer, by which the watches of the 
army were regulated. Thus cramped and cabined, did 
the great Emperor jolt along over the execrable roads of 
eastern Europe. Now for the nephew. 

Li August, 1867, the Emperor Napoleon III, with the 
Empress Eugenie, paid a visit to the Emperor and Empress 
of Austria. Their suite of travelling apartments consisted 
of nine railway coaches, communicating with each other by 
tastefully decorated bridges. In the middle was a hand- 
some sitting-room, furnished with chairs, ottomans, pictures, 
clocks, and chandeliers. On one side of this room was the 
dining-room, and on the other the Emperor's study. In the 
middle of the dining-room was an extension table with easy 
chairs ranged parallel to the sides of the car. The Em- 
peror's study contained an elegant writing table, a clock, in 
the style of the Renaissance, a thermometer, barometer, and 
telegraphic apparatus, by means of which communication 
was established with the several apartments of the various 
court officials travelling with the royal pair. Next to the 



THE LUXUKIES OF TEAVEL. 191 

study was the bed-room of the Emperor and Empress, with 
dressing-rooms attached. In the remaining cars were the 
apartments of the imperial suite, the kitchen, wine-cellar, and 
a conservatory filled with the choicest flowers. And all this, 
Monsieur Bonaparte, flying forward at forty miles an hour, 
with no jolting, no broken axles, and no mud! 

Let us also see how Queen Victoria travels. Her jour- 
neying is slightly different from that of the Queen of She- 
ba to Jerusalem. When the Queen of England travels from 
Windsor to Balmoral, she traverses the length of England 
in a single night, reposing in a royal car. The utmost pre- 
cautions are taken for her safety, and detailed instructions 
are issued to the various railway officials for that purpose; 
none of the public are admitted, under any circumstances, 
to the stations between Banbury and Edinburgh ; the rail- 
way servants perform the necessary work on the platforms as 
noiselessly as possible ; and no cheering is permitted to dis- 
turb the repose of the Queen; the royal train is preceded by 
a pilot engine, and is furnished with continuous brakes and 
electric communicators; and, finally, a lookout man is sta- 
tioned on the tender of the engine with orders to keep a sharp 
eye upon the rear of the train for signals in that direction, 
and similar orders are given to the guard in the front car. 

In America, too, we have some royal travellers. When 
Senator Sharon, of Nevada (" the silver satrap of the 
Sierras"), wishes to go from his home to Washington or 
New York, he orders his wagon to be brought out of the 
barn and hitched up for his little drive over the continent. 
The wagon is a private palace car, finished inside with rare 
native woods, pier-mirrors, hanging book-shelves, evening 
card-table and luxurious sofas, while costly crystal, and 
delicate china and silver ware crown the oak buffet. When 



192 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

the senator reaches Washington, he stores his car until he 
wishes to return. 

The elegant private car of President Vanderbilt is fitted 
up with a state-room, sitting and dining-room, card-room, 
observatory, kitchen, electric bells, and the richest furniture 
of every kind. When he travels, he has a special engine, 
and a special time-table, and all other trains must keep out 
of his way. He often traverses a hundred miles in a hun- 
dred minutes; the mere conception of such speed almost 
takes away one's breath. 

Mr. Vanderbilt's car cost twenty thousand dollars ; as did 
also a beautiful oar presented to Mr. E. H. Talbott, the editor 
of the " Railway Age," in Chicago, by various manufacturing 
firms of the country, in token of admiration for his ener- 
getic administration of the Chicago Exhibition of Railway 
Appliances. It is needless to say that there is nothing of 
the nabob about Mr. Talbott. His car is simply designed 
to exhibit a model railway coach. It is a perfect beauty 
from wheel to deck-lights. The parlor is finished in solid 
mahogany. The larger pieces of the silver service are 
engraved with representations of old historical locomotives 
and cars. In a mahogany case are working models of the 
Westinghouse brakes, so arranged as to show every move- 
ment of the engineer in handling them, and being, in addi- 
tion, actually connected with brakes of the whole train, so 
that an occupant of the car can stop it at pleasure. There 
are also an observation-room, bed-rooms, kitchen and pantry. 
The chief rooms are finished with the richest woods, native 
and foreign, in their natural colors, and furnished with 
mirrors, carpets and upholstery in keeping with the other 
features of the carriage. 

Let us now look at a bit of the history pertaining to the 



THE LUXURIES OF TRAVEL. 



193 



invention of these luxurious travelling hotels. The first 
sleeping-car ever built in the United States was made in 
the shops of the Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis railroad, 
by a mechanic named Woodruff. The coach provided seats 




(By courtesy of the ** Railway Age.") 
INTERIOE OF THE "RAILWAY AGE " CAR. 



for sixty passengers, and at night the said seats were con- 
verted into flat berths. The inventor was too poor to pay 
the patent fees. So the president of the road drew up the 
initial papers, and advanced him the money by which the 
13 



194 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

patent was secured (1856 or 1857). Colonel Childs, engin- 
eer of the railroad, took a half interest in the patent for 
a merely nominal sum. But after the patent had been 
secured there was no one in Terre Haute interested enough 
in the invention to advance funds for having it introduced 
into use. The officers of the road laid the subject before 
the superintendent of the New York Central railroad, who 
allowed a couple of cars to be fitted up as sleepers and run 
upon the western division of the Central, It is tolerably 
certain that Webster Wagner saw the novel cars, or heard 
of them, and thereupon set to work at the invention of his 
own sleeping-cars, for in 1858 he built for the New York 
Central four sleeping-coaches, which he patented. Wood- 
ruff disputed his patent in the courts; his (Woodruff's) px-ior 
claim was admitted, and he consequently received a hand- 
some royalty from both the Wagner and the Pullman com- 
panies, and died worth several hundred thousand dollars. 
Wagner built his first palace-car in 1867. He was of Ger- 
man descent, was born in Palatine, New York, was appren- 
ticed to his elder brother to learn the wagon-maker's trade, 
and later became connected with the railroad in some sub- 
ordinate capacity, where he was led to apply his mechanical 
knowledge to the invention of the most sumptuous wagon in 
the world. He was elected to the state legislature after 
he had become rich and well known, and was killed in one 
of his own coaches, by the railway accident at Spuyten Duy- 
vil, January 13, 1882. Senator Wagner was tall, with a 
slight stoop in his broad shoulders; his eyes were blue, and 
hair and beard gray at the time of his death. 

George M. Pullman, founder of the car company and the 
model town in Illinois that bear his name (the town is ten 
miles south of Chicago), was once a miner in Colorado, and 



THE LUXUEIES OF TEAVEL. 195 

is said to have been so poor that, like both Woodruff and 
Wagner, it was with difficulty that he could raise money 
enough to introduce his invention of a day coach trans- 
formed into a sleeper. His first car was run in 1859. 
Some of the early Pullman cars had sixteen wheels instead 
of twelve, the present number. 

The latest luxury for travellers is the Mann "boudoir" 
car — divided into eight cosey little rooms, some for two 
and others for four persons each. The boudoirs are all on 
one side of the car, an aisle running along the other side. 
There is a smoking room, and there are electric bells, etc. 
In short, one can travel in these cars in complete privacy, 
as if he were in his own coach. The cars were first run 
between Boston and New York. 

Smoking-cars may be counted among the luxuries of 
the rail; luxuries for men in the positive sense, and for 
women in the negative sense. It is rather an embarrassing 
case for the conductor when he discovers a woman smok- 
ing a pipe in a railroad car. At one of the railway 
stations between Cologne and Berlin, a few years ago, a 
lady was being shown into a ladies' car by the porter of 
the station, when, to their dismay, they beheld two recum- 
bent dames each with a small meerschaum between her 
lips. The lady pointed in horror to the smoke, and gazed 
at the porter; he pointed to the label on the car window 
(Filr Damen) and stared blankly into the coupe. The 
case was not provided for in the regulations, and nobody 
knew what was to be done about it. Luckily a gentle- 
man came forward at this point of the comedy, and handed 
the lady into the " non-smoking " car. 

A similar case is related to have occurred in this country. 
As an American conductor was one day going through a 



196 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. 

car he saw a woman smoking a pipe with great com- 
posure, 

"Madam," he said, "we don't even allow men to smoke 
in this car." 

"That is an excellent rule," she replied very coolly; "if 
I see any man smoking in here I'll inform you at once." 

Speed is held by the people of this hurrying age to be one 
of the chief luxuries of a journey by steam. And so it is if 
every precaution is taken against accidents. It is a mistake 
to think that there is any more danger in running a train 
at the rate of forty miles an hour over a good road than at 
twenty-five an hour. The reasons why it is safer to drive 
an engine sixty miles an hour now than it was twenty miles 
an hour twenty-five years ago, are these: we now have the 
Miller platform and buffer, which closely bind the different 
cars together' and lessen the danger of derailment; the rails 
are jointed with fish-plates; there are five cross-ties now 
where there were three formerly; locomotives and cars are 
built stronger than they used to be; and most roads are 
provided with experienced train-despatchers and telegraph 
operators, and a system of electric signals. Assuming the 
tensile strength of a Bessemer steel car- wheel tire to be one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per square inch, 
and taking twenty-five as a factor of safety, it is certain 
that the wheel can safely revolve so as to attain a speed of 
one hundred and fifty miles an hour. But such a high rate 
of speed would be uncomfortable and costly. It is five 
times as expensive to run a train at sixty miles per hour as 
it is at twenty; both speed and steepness of grade are costly 
in the matter of expenditure of power. But the motto of 
the da}"^ is " speed at any cost," and the railway companies 
must meet the demand. 



THE LUXURIES OF TRAYEL. 197 

It is a fact not often recognized that extremely high 
rates of speed were attained in the very earliest days of the 
railroad. Mr. I. K. Brunei, engineer on the Great Western 
railroad, England, advertised in the " Mark Lane Express " 
in 1841, that he would perforin a match from Bristol to 
London by the engine called " The Hurricane," within two 
hours. This was at the rate of sixty miles the hour. In 
the "Illustrated London News" for August 10, 1844, it 
is stated that the journey by rail from Slough to London 
(eighteen miles) was accomplished in fifteen minutes and 
ten seconds; and Mr. R. Dymond, F.S.A., states in " Notes and 
Queries," January 8, 1881, that in 1846 he travelled with 
Brunei over the South Devonshire railroad at a speed of 
seventy miles an hour. And to this day English trains are 
thought to exceed ours in speed by from twenty to twenty- 
five per cent, their freight trains running as fast as our ex- 
presses, or thirty miles an hour. But a correspondent of the 
New York "Evening Post" writes from London that critical 
examination does not sustain the accepted notion of the 
superior velocity of English ti'ains. He states that the 
rates for England are forty-one to forty-seven miles per 
hour. The " Plying Dutchman," the famous fast train of 
the Great Western road, only makes forty-six miles an 
hour, while the Leeds Express attains forty-seven, and the 
Midland Scotch Express, forty-one. On the Continent there 
is a train running from Berlin to Hanover that travels fifty- 
one and seven-tenths miles per hour; and a through train 
now runs from St. Petersburg to Paris, without stoppage, 
at the rate of fifty-six miles an hour. The fastest trains in 
tills country are those between New York and Philadelphia 
over the Bound Brook and the Pennsylvania Company's 
routes. These average forty-five to forty-seven miles an hour, 



198 WOiq"DEES A]S"D CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and sometimes make sixty miles in sixty minutes. An engine 
built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works ran ninety miles in 
ninety-eight minutes; the English feature of a single driv- 
ing-wheel on each side instead of two, gave this engine its 
advantage. For a high rate of speed over long distances 
the New York and Chicago Limited beats the world. It 
whirls over the nine hundred and thirteen miles that sepa- 
rate the two cities, in twenty-five hours. 

They seemed to take things in a good, old-fashioned, 
leisurely way, on some of the English roads at least, in the 
year 1859, if we may judge from the following incident 
taken by the author from the London " Times " of that year. 
It relates to the Stopping of a Train hy Mushrooms: An 
English traveller, who was passing over a railroad on the 
English side of the border-line of South Wales, says: "We 
happened to pass "a field strown with a most luxurious 
growth of mushrooms. I had hardly remarked the circum- 
stance to my companion when we felt the train suddenly 
stop, and looking out to the front, we saw, to our astonish- 
ment, the driver jump off the engine, vault over the fence, 
and proceed to fill his hat with the ti'easure. In a moment 
the guard was over the fence following his example, which, 
as may be supposed, was infectious, for in less than half a 
minute every door was thrown open, and the field covered 
with the passengers, every one of whom brought back a 
pretty good hatful." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTER. 

Staym-ingynes, that stand in lines, 

Enormous and amazing; 
That squeal and snort like whales in sport, 

Or elephants a-grazing. — Thackeray. 

a RIP AND GO are the requisites of a good locomotive, 
says Mr. P. Scott Russell. The enemy of grip is slip; 
damp makes slip, but dry gives grip. That is to say, a loco- 
motive gets a better bite on a dry rail than on a wet one. 
When the iron wheel rolls over the track, a weight of seven 
tons causes a grip of one ton. At least, in dry countries this 
is the case. But in moist countries it takes a weight of ten 
tons to give a grip of one ton. It follows, therefore, that to 
increase the traction of an engine you have only to increase 
its weight. But a limit is practically set to this increase; 
for a very heavy locomotive tears the rails all to pieces, 
unless the weight is distributed over two or even three 
pairs of coupled driving-wheels. The application of this 
principle of numerous driving-wheels in America has re- 
sulted in the production of monster engines. The hierarchy 
in order of size is (1) " Camel-backs," (2) " Moguls," (3) 
" Consolidations," each of these having an increase over the 
one preceding, in the number of its driving-wheels. Our 
locomotives differ much from those of England. English 
engines have no springs, and are built for straight and 
level roads. They would continually be jumping the track 
of our roads. American engines are flexible machines, 

199 



200 WOIvTOEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

being hung upon springs or upon the fulcrums of a system 
of levers balanced equally in every direction. Now, if, 
owing to the inequality of the road, the wheels are at any 
time wrenched out of a level position, the frame work of 
the locomotive is not thereby wrenched, but self-adjusted to 
the rails. This flexibility of the truck also prevents derail- 
ment. Our engines are also furnished with an ingenious 
mechanism for shifting the weight as the locomotive turns 
a curve. By means of this device the locomotive can lean 
over toward the inside of the curve, and then gi'acefully 
recover its equilibrium, like a circus-rider in the ring. 
The inventor of the essential principle of this truck is John 
B. Jervis, builder of the Delaware and Hudson canal. 

There was a double reason for the use of a cab on Amer- 
ican engines; first, to protect the engineer and fireman 
from the smoke and fiame issuing from the wood-burning 
locomotive, and, second, to protect them from the great ex- 
tremes of temperature and weather that characterize our cli- 
mate. The early engines were without spark-arresters, and 
the flame often streamed backward as far as to the engineer; 
and even now, when a locomotive is drawing a heavy 
load, the exhaust steam causes such a vacuum in the funnel, 
and draws the air so strongly through the fire and along 
the boiler tubes that the flame pours out of the top of the 
chimney a foot in length backward, in a crimson plume, 
while the engine itself is humming like a threshing ma- 
chine. The beauty of the smoke as it rolls from the funnel 
has already been alluded to. A cunning old hawk in France 
has found other than aesthetic uses for this black cloud of 
smoke. The old pirate has, for flfteen years, been in the 
habit of hiding himself in the smoke and steam of the rail- 
way trains running between the stations of Mesgviny and 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTEK. 201 

Romilly, for the purpose of more easily pouncing upon the 
small birds that fly up from the grass and bushes upon the 
approach of a train. The rascal knows that they cannot 
see him in the smoke and steam, and he flies slow or fast 
with the train, until he sees an opportunity to make a meal. 
In the same way fowls will follow a horse or a cow about a 
meadow to catch the insects disturbed by the grazing of the 
animals. 

The fii-e-steed always has a good appetite; he will toss 
3'ou down one thousand two hundred gallons of water and a 
cord of wood every hour, and make nothing of it. He is 
not very fastidious about his dishes, either, and when wood 
and coal have given out, he has been known at various 
times to devour (fressen) such strange things as pigs, mum- 
mies, fence-rails, peat, straw, and petroleum. Straw-burn- 
ing locomotives were exhibited at a Vienna Exposition a 
few years ago, and recently Russian locomotives have 
employed petroleum for fuel. 

The average life of a locomotive is thirty years. At the 
end of eleven years a sum equal to its original cost has usu- 
ally been expended upon it. An engine is considered to be 
doing good service if it runs two hundred and fifty days in a 
year. It is evident that a machine consisting of five thou- 
sand four hundred and sixteen pieces, cannot be subjected 
to the terrible jolting and strain and soilure of rail travel 
more than two or three days, without needing more or less 
repairing and cleansing. Indeed, the iron horse needs rest 
and careful tendance, even more than .a horse of flesh and 
blood. After a thousand miles' run it is found that joints 
have become relaxed, bolts loosened, rubbing surfaces often 
unequally expanded (by heat or cold) or strained and 
twisted, the grate-bars and fire-box choked with clinkers, 



202 WON"DEES AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

and the tubes obstructed by coke. It is then that the 
engine-cleaners show themselves in all their glory. They 
take the black giant into the stable — these greasy-capped 
grooms and hostlers — clean out the fire-box, scrape the 
grate-bars, tighten the bolts and rivets, thoroughly oil, 
cleanse, and polish all parts subjected to friction, and allow 
the heated surfaces to cool down, until, at the end of six or 
eight hours, the engine is again ready for service. 

Speaking of engine-cleaners, a curious incident is told of 
one formerly in the employ of the Chard and Taunton Rail- 
road Compan}^, in England. His name was William Stev- 
ens. One midnight William took it into his head to have a 
ride on the locomotive " Busy Bee." Accordingly he kin- 
dled the fire, and when he judged he had a sufficient head of 
steam, pulled the throttle and started off". But he did not 
know how to compress the steam, and it blew off in every 
direction, with terrific noise, to the be wonderment and 
alarm of the awakened inhabitants of the neighborhood. 
Up and down the track he tore in this manner for two 
mortal hours, his face white with suppressed excitement, as 
the watchman by the bridge reported, but yet enjoying his 
ride amazingly. Once as he was on the point of entering 
the main line of the Bristol and Exeter road, he fortunately 
heard the whistle of the approaching night mail for 
London, and backed away just in time to avoid a terrible 
catastrophe. At length he returned to the station, got off 
the engine, and lay down by its side to await the coming of 
the engineer. At £our o'clock the engineer was walking 
toward the station, and when within a hundred yards of his 
locomotive, suddenly saw it blown to pieces before his very 
eyes. It appeared that the rascally engine-cleaner had 
exhausted all the water in the boiler, and neglected to turn 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTER. 203 

on more. Strange to say, the blockhead received no in- 
jury, owing to his being on the ground when the explosion 
occurred. But if the " Busy Bee " was prevented from 
inserting her vindictive sting into her destroyer, she was 
none the less revenged, for the sentence pronounced by the 
court was imprisonment for one month at hard labor. 

This incident calls to mind another which happened on a 
railroad near Holyhead, North Wales. One day a signal- 
man on the line was astonished at seeing a " wild " engine 
come thundering along the track at a prodigious rate, and 
paying no attention whatever to his signals of danger. 
Now the Irish mail was nearly due from the opposite direc- 
tion, and a terrible collision seemed inevitable. Suddenly 
it flashed across the mind of the man that the engineer 
and fireman must be asleep. He telegraphed at once to the 
next station to put fog signals on the track. His surmise 
was correct; the fog signals stopped the engine, and it 
appeared that the men had been fifteen hours on duty, 
and had both been sound asleep. The water had disap- 
peared from the boiler, and the fire was nearly out, so that, 
but for the prompt action of the signalman, they would 
have been killed by the explosion of the engine, even if the 
Irish mail had spared them. They were both immediately 
discharged; but not with much justice, it would seem, when 
one considers that the cause of their misfortune was the 
greed or neglect of the company in keeping them so long 
on duty. 

The life of a locomotive engineer is not an enviable one. 
Apart from the wearing sense of responsibility, and the 
strain and jar received by the nervous system, there are 
certain popular opinions which must be defied. For 
instance, it is the firm conviction of nearly everybody that 



204 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

it is high treason for an engineer to jump from his engine 
in the face of an approaching collision or wreck. Now, as 
a matter of fact, after the air-brakes have been applied, the 
engine reversed, and the sand-pipe opened, it is generally 
mere folly for the driver and fireman to stay i» the engine, 
with the certainty of an approaching collision. The men 
are of no earthly use upon the engine after that, and if they 
do not jump, it is because they have not time, or are too 
foolhardy. In most cases, then, the popular talk about the 
" glorious heroism " of the engineer who " refused to desert 
his post," and " died with his hand on the reversing lever," 
is all nonsense, and it is too bad that the gross ignorance 
of people should lead them to exa,ct of locomotive-drivers a 
course of action which is fatal to them without being of the 
slightest use to anybody else. The majority of engineers 
are, by training and by necessity, men of physical courage 
and moral stamina, and should be allowed to judge in 
each case what risks they ought to take. Time and again 
the newspapers of Europe and America publish instances of 
the self-sacrificing devotion and heroism of locomotive-engi- 
neers who staid by the engine ivhen it was necessary for the 
welfare of the passengers that they should do so. A single 
instance will answer for many: — 

On October 22, 1882, the 1.15 p.m. local train of the 
Pennsylvania railroad left the Jersey City depot as usual. 
Every car was crowded, and in the smoking-car standing- 
room was scarcely to be had. There was no baggage-car, 
the tender of the engine being attached directly to the 
smoking-car. Suddenly, the door of this car was burst vio- 
lently open, admitting a gust of flame and smoke, out of 
which engineer Joseph A. Seeds and his fireman emerged, 
shutting the door behind them. They had been driven 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTER. 305 

out of the engine by the flames which had poured out of the 
furnace^door and set the cab on fire. 

Great excitement arose; the smoking-car was immedi- 
ately packed full of terrified people eager to know what 
had happened. The engineer ordered his fireman to use 
the lever of the air-brake in the rear of the smoking-car, 
and stop the train; but it was impossible for the man to 
stir an inch, so great was the crush in the aisle. " What is 
to be done?" was the cry. The engineer said nothing, but 
was seen to set his teeth hard as he sprang upon the tender 
and disappeared through the smoke and flame. Presently 
the train slackened speed, and then came to a stop on the 
river-bridge. It was an easy matter to draw up water and 
extinguish the fire. But the brave engineer was found 
lying on the tank of the tender, in an unconscious state; 
his clothes were burned from his body, and it was necessary 
to lift him down with great care to avoid removing the 
skin from the fiesh. He was taken to the hospital, and died 
in a few days. You will not find nobler heroism in the 
world than this. Engineer Seeds died to save the lives of 
those passengers, and if they did not provide for the widow 
and children he left behind him, it is to their everlasting 
shame and disgrace. It was suggested at the time by the 
New York "Tribune" that a purse be made up, and we 
will hope, for the honor of human nature, that this was 
done. 

One who dips a little way into the railway journals of 
the West soon discovers the existence of a curious kind 
of railway yarns, full of enormous exaggerations, distor- 
tions and improbabilities, highly colored with a peculiar 
kind of rhetoric. These yarns, like those of sailors, always 
have such a distinctive stamp of improbability upon them 



206 WOISTDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

that you recognize them at sight as fabrications. They 
generally purport to have been told by some tough old 
engineer or fireman, and relate to his terrific adventures 
by rail. But there are, of course, a great many genuine 
locomotive stories to be picked out of the chaff. A writer 
in " Lippincott's Magazine," for instance, tells how a con- 
ductor was chased by a locomotive. The old Long Island 
railroad, at the time when the incident occurred, was a 
single-track affair with numerous switches and sidings. 
One pitch-dark night, when the conductor was taking three 
passenger cars through to Greenport, and had got about six 
or eight miles on his way, he noticed the head-light of a 
locomotive in his rear. He was thunder-struck at the dis- 
covery, and as he gazed, his astonishment grew into deep 
apprehension, for he saw that the locomotive was rapidly 
gaining upon his train. He went forward and ordered the 
engineer to. put on more steam, and then ensued a wild 
chase of many miles through the night, both train and 
pursuing locomotive tearing along at a high rate of speed, 
and throwing out showers of sparks from the wheels. 
Everybody on board the cars believed the engineer of the 
pursuing locomotive to be either mad or intoxicated. At 
last the fireman conceived the happy thought of oiling the 
track in the rear of the train, since a locomotive can make 
no progress on greasy rails. This device saved the train 
from disaster. The anointing of the track with the con- 
tents of two huge cans of kerosene for half a mile soon 
caused the head-light of the chasing locomotive to grow 
dim in the distance. The train was stopped, and then 
backed up that the mystery might be investigated, the 
conductor and engineer, in the meantime, preparing to give 
the drunken driver of the " wild " locomotive a merited 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTER. 307 

castigation (in words). But when they neared the head- 
light a laughable scene was presented. " There stood the 
old ' Ben Franklin,' puffing and snorting and pawing like 
a mad bull, the driving-wheels buzzing around on the 
greased track like all possessed, but not gaining an inch." 
Sanding the track, they bore down on the old machine, but 
no sign of an engineer or fireman was to be perceived. 
There was a full head of steam on, but the fires were 
getting low. Pushing back to the next station with the 
runaway engine, the conductor sided his cars just in time to 
avoid the down train, and was then handed a despatch 
telling him that the "Ben Franklin" had broken loose, 
and ordering him to switch it off at Lakeland and wreck it. 
But the oiled track had saved them that trouble, and had 
also saved " Benjamin " from a smash-up. 

Locomotive runaways, such as the foregoing, are by no 
means rare occurrences. Not long ago two engines col- 
lided on a track of the Boston and Maine railroad, in 
Tewksbury. The shock opened the throttle valve of one of 
them, and as the engineer had jumped from it, it started 
down the track alone towai'd Lowell. Eeaching the end of 
the track at the Lowell station, " it overturned the hunter as 
if it were a mere wisp of straw, went ploughing through 
the floor of the station for a distance of seventy-five feet, 
and entered the express office. It crashed through the 
partition separating this office from the station quarters, 
and also wrecked one end of the baggage room in passing. 
As it entered the express office, four persons were present 
and endeavored to escape. Two got out by way of the 
door. One was behind the counter, and only had time to 
leap on the desk when the puffing engine reached him. A 
plank was hurled against the door and pinned him in close 



208 WOifDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OP THE EAILWAY. 

quarters, but inflicted only slight injuries. Meanwhile the 
engine was grating its head against the brick wall which 
adjoined the public sidewalk, and tore out quite a section, 
besides all the windows, when fortunately the floor gave 
way, and it fell into the basement, emitting clouds of steam 
and smoke. The fourth occupant of the express office was 
carried down into the cellar with the engine and debris, 
and was completely, though lightly covered, resting face 
downward just under the headlight." 

An English journal some years ago gave its readers 
an entertaining account of a fight for a locomotive. The 
machine had been seized (illegally, as the owner thought) 
for debt, and sold for a quarter of its value. The writer 
in the journal, who was the chief actor in the adventure, 
tells the story in the first person. He received orders from 
the company by which he was employed, to go at once to the 
place where the engine was, procure a number of men and 
horses from the lead mines near at hand, remove the 
machine on to the main line after the night mail had 
passed, and take her to Nantygolyn station in time to meet 
the up luggage train at 2.30 in the moi'ning; then to 
attach her to that train and so fetch her to the company's 
quarters. Let us now permit the hero of the occasion to 
tell his own story: 

- " The wind was rising, laden with occasional showers, as 
I reached the brick-field. The state of aff"airs was worse 
than I had imagined. The engine had been left on an ex- 
posed part of the line, and where there was a sharp curve, 
causing the outside rail to be much higher than the other. 
Inclining at such a sharp angle, it had been exposed to the 
full fury of a recent gale, which catching it at so great a 
disadvantage had tilted it completely over, and it now lay 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AJSTD ITS MASTEE. 209 

on its side on the embankment, with the hindermost wheels, 
however, resting on, or only partly off the rails. It was a 
small and very light engine, and had been originally in- 
tended for the Crimea. It was a wild and lonely place 
where the brickyard was situated. It was just where the 
moorland commenced and where there was nothing to inter- 
rupt the eye as it roamed over the purple flat, strangely lit 
up in places by crimsoning gleams and patches of golden 
brown as the light of a stormy sunset was reflected from the 
surface of a pool, or shone on a lighter ground of dead 
rushes and ling. Beyond all, was a long gray line which 
could not be mistaken for anything but what it was, the 
bonny, open sea. If you listened intently you could even 
catch, borne on the wind, the faint roar of the surf on the 
flat, sandy shore." 

His men, he goes on to say, were duly employed, and, 
when night came, rigged up a crane, and were trying to 
raise the fallen engine, when suddenly they discovered 
forms flitting through the darkness around them; they 
were the vanguard of the enemy, the force got together by 
the late purchaser of the engine for the purpose of saving 
his property from recaption. 

" ' Look sharp, lads, and get her on the line before they 
come,' I cried, and lent a hand to the ropes myself. At last 
with a thud she was righted, and then the screw-jacks were 
again applied to lift her properly on the rails. This was 
done without interruption. The horses were harnessed to, 
and she began to move merrily enough, though a rattling 
noise inside made it evident that some of her machinery 
was broken. I was beginning to hope we might soon gain 
the main line, about half a mile away, when over the bank 
there came some twenty or thirty men and lads. The 
14 



210 WONDERS AHD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

wheels were scotched before we could prevent it. They 
harnessed a couple of horses and half a dozen donkeys to the 
other end of the engine. Two tar-barrels they had brought 
with them were set alight, and blazed furiously, affording 
plent}^ of light. I warned my men not to have recourse to 
violence, and in this I was seconded by the leader of the op- 
posite side, who was, in fact, the purchaser of the engine. 

"'It shall be a fair fight,' he said. 'Let us see which 
can pull the hardest now, and you take your chance in the 
law afterward.' 

"By mutual consent we unscotched the wheels, and the 
tournament began. First one party gained a few yards, 
then the other. The animals lugged their very hardest, 
aided by the men. The Englishmen were the strongest, 
although the fewest in number, but the incline was in favor 
of the Welshmen, and at first it seemed as if they would 
triumph and drag the engine back to where the rails were 
broken up. No blows passed between us, and the good 
humor shown by everyone surprised me much." 

After a great deal of lugging, and tugging, and scotch- 
ing of wheels, during which neither party gained any 
advantage, a bright idea occurred to the leader of the com- 
pany's party. He went up to one of his men, and asked 
him which was the best runner in their party. 

"'There will be none as good as you, sir; and they be 
all tired with this pulley-hauley work.' 

"'Well then, I'm off" to Nantygolyn station; and I'll 
come back with the engine of the luggage train. Do you 
see? Look to the points at the junction.' 

"'Capital, sir!' exclaimed he, as I turned and dashed 
over the bank and into the narrow road. I had scarcely 
got out of the glare of the fire when I was roughly collared by 



THE LOCOMOTIVE AND ITS MASTER, 211 

somebody. As lie was evidently not a friend, and there 
was no time for an explanation, even if I had wished to 
give any, I placed my hand over his shoulder and my arm 
under his chin, and with a sudden wrench, taught me by a 
Welsh collier, forced his head back and left him half 
insensible on the ground." 

Covering the two miles in about a quai'ter of an hour, 
the agent returned with the engine, which steamed slowly 
up to the scene of contest. 

" Both parties had drawn off their forces, and were 
sitting and standing in groups a little apart, while rude 
chaff was freely interchanged. The firelight cast long and 
wavering shadows around, and made the outer darkness 
look blacker and more impenetrable than ever. The rain 
still came steadily down and hissed on the blazing fii'eft, 
while the wet ground was trodden ankle deep. 

" Such a yell- arose after the first astonished silence, 
from our opponents, answered back by a ringing cheer 
from my men. The cattle were quickly unloosened and 
ridden off out of the way by the men. The ropes were 
quickly transferred to the big engine, and in the midst of a 
general melee the two locomotives moved slowly off, drag- 
ging their horses and donkeys backward. Seeing the 
uselessness of employing brute force against steam, they 
cut their ropes, and we moved triumphantly off, followed 
by a volley of oaths and stones. One of the latter struck 
me on the cheek, laying it open and knocking me back on 
the coals in the tender. It was as much as I could do 
to restrain my men from jumping off and charging them. 
Well, that is how I fought for and won the locomotive." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRACK. 

Sling up the bugle ! liarp and lute, 

Let every du&ty string he mute, 

Be still the drum and dumh the flute, 

While trumpets blow so brave and loud, 
They rally like a flag unfurled 
And wake and warn the startled world — 

The trumpets of the " Flying Cloud." 

Benj. F. Taylor, " The Flying Heralds." 

ri IHE womb of a steel rail is the Bessemer " converter." 
-*- When the roasted iron comes out of the blast furnace 
as pig iron, it is cast into the huge converter to ,be made 
into steel by an admixture of carbon. But it already has 
some carbon in it, and we want first to get I'id of that, 
because we don't know exactly how much it is, and then 
we can add our own carbon in carefully measured amounts. 
They remove the carbon from the pig iron by blowing air 
through the converter, for the oxygen of the air unites 
with the carbon and passes off with it in a long body of 
flame of a surpassingly beautiful and dazzling whiteness. 
The process takes twenty minutes, and all the while the 
foundry is filled with the heavy roar of the blast, the vol- 
canic undertone of the rumbling metal, and showers of 
sparks blown out of the aperture in the vessel like tiny 
rockets or scintillating stars. Do you see that man watch- 
ing the terrible white fiame with a spectroscope? He is 
anxiously looking out for the moment when the decarbon- 

212 



THE TEACK. 313 

izing process is complete, for then the spiegeleisen must be 
added, and the gold liquor poured glowing hot into moulds. 
The moulded masses are made into " blooms " by being 
repeatedly passed through the jaws of a mill, and then 
they are ready to be stretched out into rails. It is a weird 
sight to see men handling the long red-hot rails in a foun- 
dry at night. They look like demons in the red glare as 
they draw the long rails from the furnace with tongs, and 
run to and fro with them in the shadowy light — their 
blows rapid and their movements excited, as if they were 
forging some hellish .machine for the torture of the damned. 
But we do them wrong; every blow they fetch forges 
another link in the iron bonds that are uniting the nations 
of the world together in peace and good will. The rail- 
forger as well as the rail-splitter deserves our respect. ' 

On the subject of Gauges there is a word to be said. 
Most of the railroads of the world have a gauge of four 
feet, eight and a half inches. This was the width of 
the colliery tramways in England, and was adopted by 
Stephenson as the gauge of his first roads. It is now made 
compulsory to use the four-feet, eight-and-a-half-inch gauge 
in England, Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany, and it is 
everywhere called the standard gauge. Unfortunately in 
the United States there are all sorts of gauges, although the 
standard predominates. Some roads adopt the expedient of 
lifting through trains bodily from the trucks and running 
under them the trucks of the connecting road. A through 
train from St. Petersburg to Paris, in Europe, has recently 
.been fitted up with adjustable wheels, suited for any gauge. 
The broadest gauge ever used for a railroad was that 
adopted by Brunei for the Great Western in England. As 



214 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAT. 

the rival of Stephenson, he must do anything but imitate 
him; so he built a road seven feet in width, claiming that 
travel on such a road was safer, swifter, steadier, and more 
comfortable than on the standard road; besides that, more 
powerful engines, and cars of greater capacity, could be em- 
ployed. But the expense of such a gauge proved fatal to 
its profitable use, and after twenty years of trial Brunei's 
broad gauge gave place to a narrower one. The same thing 
has happened to the Atlantic and Great Western railroad in 
this country, and it seems probable, or possible, that the 
Erie, the Ohio and Mississippi, and the Grand Trunk lines 
will follow suit. 

The first advocate of a narrower gauge than the stand- 
ard was Robert Fairlie. The Denver and Rio Grande was 
the first narrow-gauge track laid; and since that, sixteen 
thousand miles of the narrow roads have been built in this 
country. The narrowest of practical narrow railroads thus 
far built was constructed in 1874, by Mr. G. E. Mansfield, 
the railway constructor, for his own use, at Hyde Park, 
Massachusetts. Its width was only ten inches. 

The Stations of the early railways in this country were 
mere sheds open on two or more sides to the wind and dust. 
Later, in the larger cities, huge brick barracks, than which 
nothing could be more dismal, served as points of embarka- 
tion and arrival for passengers. There is still little of 
attractiveness or homelike elegance about the stations of 
Great Britain and America; and all the poetry connected 
with these disagreeable abodes is to be found outside, 
where, in watching the coming and going of the swift 
trains, one finds much to admire, especially when the 
colored signal lamps are swinging at night, and the electric 



THE TEACK. 215 

lights are throwing their intensely defined, almost solid, 
shadows around.* 

There is no good reason why railway stations should he 
such lugubrious, hideous places. A recent traveller on the 
Continent remarks that the stations of Switzerland are 
built in the style of picturesque cottages with wide eaves, 
ornamental cornices, and graceful balconies; most of them 
are surrounded by little gardens, and some " are fairly en- 
chanting with their wealth of climbing vines." A fountain 
dancing to its own music in the midst of the blossoms is 
not unfrequently seen. At Milan the passenger station is 
a crystal palace with frescoes of Italian masters upon its 
walls, while the baggage of traveller^ is wheeled over 
noiseless floors upon trucks with rubber tires. In Florence 
a railway waiting-room is furnished in black walnut and 
crimson plush; a whole conservatory of flowers blossoms 
under the wide skylight, and marble statuary is embowered 
in orange-trees, while huge -multiplying mirrors fill up the 
panels in the walls. At Verviei'S, a little Belgian town on 
the French frontier, the walls of the station are hung with 

* Here is Dickens's picture of Mugby Junction, painted as if by a somnam- 
bule: 

" A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction, in the black 
hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls [in 
England they cover their open freight cars with black tarpaulins], and gliding 
on like vast, weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the pres- 
ence of the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret and un- 
lawful end. Half-miles of coal pursuing in a detective manner, following when 
they lead, stopping when they stop, backing when they back. Red-hot embers 
showering out upon the ground, down this dark avenue and down the other, as 
if torturing fires were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and 
grinds invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their suffering. 
Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the drooping beasts with 
horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths too: at least they have 
long icicles (or what seem so) hanging from their lips. Unknown languages in 
the air, conspiring in red, green, and white characters. An earthquake, accom- 
panied with thunder and lightning, going up express to London." 



216 WOJSTDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAT. 

dark-green velvet paper; the long windows that reach to 
the floor are curtained with heavy damask, and full-length 
portraits in oil are hung upon the walls. The nearest ap- 
proach to all this in America has been made by the Boston 
and Maine railroad, which allows its rural station-agents 
ten dollars a year for seeds, plants, etc., and offers annual 
prizes of twenty dollars, thirty dollars, and fifty dollars, 
each, to those whose stations are most tastefully and care- 
fully kept. The directors of a railroad running south from 
Philadelphia keep a salaried gardener to attend to the 
grounds about the various stations. These two instances 
are the only ones that have fallen under the writer's notice. 
No subject connected with railways is so little under- 
stood by the public in general as that of Signals. And there 
is good reason for its ignorance, since there is the widest 
discrepancy in the signal-practice of different roads. The 
vai'ious means of signalling a railway train are, — hand 
and lamp signals, bell-cord signals, whistle signals, sta- 
tionary fixed signals, switch targets, danger signals for 
rear protection, torpedo signals, the telegraphic despatch, 
and the automatic electric signal. A pretty generally un- 
derstood code of signals in America is the following: "Gro 
ahead" — an up-and-down motion of the hand, or parting 
the hands outward from the level of the face; "Stop" — a 
motion crosswise with the track, or a downward motion of 
the hand; "Back up" — moving the arm in the arc of a 
circle over the head, at the same time twisting the body 
until the hand is pointed almost in the direction the train 
is to move. "Train parted" — a motion in a vertical circle 
at arm's length across the track, given continuously until 
answered by the engineer. One blast of the whistle means 
" stop," or " down brakes"; two blasts, " go ahead," or " off" 



THE TRACK. 217 

brakes"; continued whistling means " danger " ; the cattle- 
alarm consists of a succession of short, sharp blasts. A red 
flag waved on the track means "danger"; if stuck up 
beside the track, " danger ahead " ; carried unfurled on the 
engine it means " another engine is on the way." A green 
flag denotes " caution, proceed with care " ; a white flag 
means "safety, track clear"; one torpedo-signal indicates 
" danger "; two torpedoes, " caution "; one pull of the bell- 
cord means "start"; when the train is running some con- 
ductors give one pull for " stop," and some give two; three 
pulls means " back up." Usage diff'ers so much in the case 
of signals for rear protection, and many kinds of stationary 
fixed signals, that no general rules can be given for these. 

The mechanical signalling done by railroads may be con- 
veniently classed under two heads, — (1) telegraphic work 
for long distances, and (2) station, or switch work. It was 
some time after the invention of the telegraph before rail- 
roads could be got to adopt the new invention. The first 
to employ it for the purpose of controlling the movements 
of trains was Superintendent Charles Minot of the ISTew 
York and Erie railroad, in 1850. Previous to this, the 
chronometer, the hand-flag, and a few fixed signals were 
the only means employed in this country for the avoidance 
of collisions. The first fixed railway signal in England was 
that adopted by the Grand Junction railroad, in 1838. It 
consisted of a disk fixed on a spindle, with a handle to turn 
it; a lamp took its place by night, the whole constituting 
merely a danger-signal. 

It suggestively marks the additional element of safety 
afforded in this day by the use of the telegraph, to read, in 
an old American work on railroad accidents, of a catastro- 
phe that happened to a train on the Lowell and Nashua 



218 WON"DERS AND CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. 

railroad, on July 5, 1841. There were a large number of 
persons in ISTashua on that day, who had been celebrating 
" the Fourth " and were anxious to get to Lowell by the 
last downward train of cars. Accordingly, the superinten- 
dent at Nashu-a directed a conductor of one of the trains 
down to inform the superintendent at Lowell that he must 
not send the last upward train as usual. By some neglect 
this information was not received, and the train was sent 
up. The consequence was that as the two trains were 
going round a curve at " great speed " they collided, 
smashed their engines and " severely wounded four per- 
sons, one of whom it was thought would not survive the 
accident." We may smile at the low rate of speed that 
must have been in vogue when the collision of two trains 
of cars going at " a high rate of speed " resulted in so com- 
paratively slight a calamity as this; but the incident points 
the contrast between that day and this in the matter of sig- 
nals. If the telegraph had been in existence, with the 
present accurate system of checks applied to train-despatch- 
ing, no accident would have occurred. 

The strain of responsibility upon the train-despatcher of 
a great railroad in this day seems almost unendurable to an 
outsider. There he sits in his office at headquarters, like a 
magician, and, gazing on his chart, directs by the aid of a 
telegraphic assistant the movements of a whole army of 
flying trains scattered along the tracks for a thousand 
miles. They dare not move without his order, but as 
soon as the far-whispered word is received they start on, 
and woe to the despatcher, if he has lessened for a moment 
the lynx-eyed vigilance that is the price of his position and 
of the safety of the trains. Before his eyes is a chart con- 
taining the numbers of every train moving on the road at 



THE TRACK. 219 

a given time; at all hours of the day and night come tele- 
grams from the local stations, announcing the number and 
moment of arrival and departure of every train, and this 
information is at once written on the chart, which also has 
printed upon it the names of all the stations, the number 
of miles from one to another, and the time required to pass 
between them. Having, then, all this information before 
him, the despatcher proceeds (if he uses the Double-Order 
System) to telegraph at the same time his commands to the 
two trains that are waiting to pass over the same track, 
each in opposite directions. To one train he says "stay," 
and to another " go." Both conductors repeat the message 
to him; if they differ in understanding it, they are set 
right; if the despatcher himself has erred, he is twice re- 
minded of it, and is given a chance to correct his mistake 
before sending his final order. 

Now suppose a train is wrecked: immediately every- 
thing is disarranged; the despatcher must stop perhaps 
half a dozen trains scattered all along the line from 
five to fifty miles from the accident; and if one were 
watching the scene from a balloon, he would see what 
looked almost like the movement of connected automatic 
machinery along the line of track, so quickly would freight 
trains be seen to roll out upon sidings, and passenger 
trains stop short where they were, in obedience to the 
orders received on the wires. The obstruction having 
been removed, the train-despatcher sets his flyers in motion 
again on his iron chess-board, watching their movements 
with the utmost intensity of concentration. 

The system just described is used on single-track roads. 
On double-track railways the somewhat similar block 



220 WOIS'DEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

system is used.* Block-working is a system of dividing 
up a track, or road, into a certain number of sections of 
such length as may be most convenient for traffic, and 
insuring that only one engine, or train of cars, shall be 
on one division at any given time. This is accomplished 
in England, and on such American roads as the Penn- 
sylvania Central, by having train-despatchers, or local 
telegraphers, at every block-station, and no train dare 
enter upon the section until it has received information 
from the telegrapher that the track is clear for its whole 
length. In the present state of automatic electric signal- 
systems, this English plan is the safest, although more 
expensive. It is hoped, however, that automatic signals 
may be so perfected as everywhere to supersede the 
English system. 

The automatic apparatus operates the signals by means 
of the rail circuit, with a closed circuit for keeping the 
signal at safety. A broken rail Avill put the signal to 
danger, as well as the entrance of a train ujDon the section. 
The signals have an overlap of one thousand feet, and 
there must be at least that distance between trains. The 
greater the density of traffic, the shorter the block sections 
should be. The signal of the automatic apparatus is 
usually a pivoted disk placed upon a high pole, and 
painted with one face red and the other white. The 
signal most used in Great Britain (and extensively in 
America) is the semaphore {ariim^ a sign, and (pipstv, to 
bear); it is a tall, vertical post, with movable arras and 
lights near the top. 

In Great Britain they used to have what was called the 

* Probably so named from the facility it affords for blocking the line by 
signalling back. 



THE TEACK. • 221 

"Train Staff and Ticket System," for single-track roads. 
This was a block system, too.* The road was divided into 
sections, each of which had a staff, or truncheon, usually of 
a different color or length. When an engine-driver appeared 
, at a station he was not allowed to proceed over the next 
section unless he received the staff from the station-master. 
If he did not receive it, the inference necessarily was that 
some other engine-driver was then carrying it in one or 
the other direction over the section. As there was only 
one staff, and a ticket of permission was given the driver 
along with the staff, the system evidently insured perfect 
safety. But it was a clumsy and primitive method, — too 
much like the notched-stick system^ of notation to suit the 
fancy of railroad officials after the invention of telegraphy. 
But it is at the signal and interlocking towers and 
cabins of the great stations and railroad junctions that the 
most marvellous achievements of mechanical ingenuity are 
revealed. In a little glass box hung over the middle 
interior of the Grand Central Depot in New York sits a 
magician who controls the entire activity of the place. He 
is surrounded by the implements of his magic, — broken 
lightning, electric knobs, regulator-clock, and telegraphic 
instruments; and it is at his beck and nod that the two 
hundred and fifty trains a day come and go. So in London 
there is a signal-station called by railroad men " The Hole 
in the Wall," where the railroads of all Southern England 
converge upon two lines of track The hole in the wall is 
the lookout for the signalman; he too is surrounded by 
mysterious agencies; and bells ring, hands move, huge iron 
bars creak and groan, and automatic signs start suddenly 
forth from the wall to inform the operator that the swift ex- 
press or mail below awaits his permission to enter or depart. 



222 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

The interlocking system of switches is, to state the 
matter in a few words, the complicated massing of a large 
number of switch-levers in one cabin or gallery, and con- 
necting them by locking safety bars which permit them 
to occupy certain unalterable positions only.* The plan is 
such that there can be no possible contradiction between 
the state of the switch and the signal given. It has been 
said that if a piano were constructed in such a way that 
the operator could strike on it harmonious chords only, it 
would resemble the interlocking system of signals. At the 
Cannon Street station in London there are nearly seventy 
point and signal-levers concentrated in one signal house, 
and the " number of combinations which would' be possible 
if all the signal and point-levers were not interlocked can 
be expressed only by millions. Of these, only eight hun- 
dred and eight combinations are safe, and by the interlock- 
ing apparatus, these eight hundred and eight combinations 
are rendered possible, and all the others impossible. If a 
man were to go blindfold into this signal-house, he might 
so far as accordance between switches and signals is con- 
cerned, be allowed to pull over any lever at random." These 
are the words of Charles F. Adams, Jr., who further says: 
"It may well be questioned whether the world anywhere 
else furnishes an illustration so apt and dramatic of the 
great mechanical achievements of recent times as that to be 
seen during the busy hours of any week-day from the sig- 
nal and interlocking galleries which span the tracks as they 
enter the Charing Cross or Cannon Street stations in Lon- 

* Barry's work on "Railway Appliances" contains tlie best teclmical and 
detailed explanation of the block and tiie interlocking systems. See also 
C. F. Adams, Jr.'s work on "Railway Accidents." The interlocking appa- 
ratus has been recently introduced into the United States, the machinery of 
the Union Switch and Signal Company being fouhd on many of our railroads. 



THE TEACK. 223 

don. Below and in front of the galleries the trains glide 
to and fro, coming suddenly into sight from beyond the 
bridges, and as suddenly disappearing, — winding swiftly in 
and out, and at times four of them running side by side on 
as many tracks, but in both directions; — the whole making 
up a swiftly shifting maze of complex movement, under the 
influence of which a head unaccustomed to the sight grows 
actually giddy. Yet it is all done so quietly and smoothly, 
with such an absence of haste and nervousness on. the part 
of the stolid operators in charge that it is not easy to decide 
which most to wonder at, the almost inconceivable magni- 
tude and despatch of the train movement, or the perfection 
of the appliances which make it possible." 

In a similar strain writes Mr. W. J. Stillman in " The 
Century": "Neither the sounds nor the sights of London 
impressed me as did its labyrinth of railways ; no other evi- 
dence of the power and intelligence of England has ever 
seemed to me like this stupendous accumulation of engi- 
neering accomplishment. * * * jf you want to see 
what the traffic of London is like, go to Clapham Junction 
where the great railway systems connect. The rails lie 
together like the wires of a piano. System and organiza- 
tion have done their best, and sixteen hundred trains a day 
pass and repass with safety. It is a bewilderment. In and 
out, coming, going, slow trains and fast trains; one side of 
you halts a train, and while you watch its wheels slowing, 
an express rushes past on the other side like a tornado of 
iron. * * * It is a saying of the denizens about Clap- 
ham Junction that, on the average, one man is killed every 
six weeks. One wonders, after having watched the trafiic 
a half hour, that some one is not killed every day. Look 
cityward and see the trains fljing — diverging eastward. 



224 WOKDEES AKD CUEIOSITIES OF THE EAILWAY. 

westward, northward, line under line three deep, crossing 
each other, diving under, or going over, but never on the 
same level, and then sweeping, by long curves, round the 
huge circumference of subui"ban London, a girdle of iron, 
meeting, crossing, uniting, and separating again on the 
opposite side." 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE TRAIN. 

rinHE most important thing about a car is its wheel, and 
-•- a car-wheel is not, as might be expected, an easy thing 
to make. The processes involved in its manufacture are 
intricate and delicate in the extreme. The nicest point is to 
get a hard " run " or " tread " (the part that runs upon the 
rail). The method now used is called " chilling," and was 
invented by a Philadelphian in 1847. It is a process analo- 
gous to " tempering." The whole wheel is cast from the 
same metal in one pouring, but the outer portion of the 
mould consists of a ring of iron which has previously been- 
turned upon a lathe to form the flange and tread of the 
wheel. Now when the molten iron is poured into the sand- 
mould, that portion of it which flows out to the circumfer- 
ence and comes in contact with the iron ring is instantly 
chilled, congealed, and crystallized to a depth of about half 
an inch in beautiful parallel filaments, as white as silver 
and nearly as hard as diamond. This happens because the 
cold iron is a better conductor of heat than the sand. All 
iron does not possess this invaluable chilling property. It 
has been discovered that silicon in just the right proportion 
is a necessary ingredient in good chilling-iron; and so nice 
must be the amount of this element, that it has often hap- 
pened that an entire day's work of several hundred men 
has been rendered useless by an admixture with the iron of 
one-half of one per cent of silicon in excess of the requisite 

15 225 



226 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

amount. The chilling subjects the molecular structure of 
the wheels to an immense strain, and to correct this they 
are annealed by swinging them while glowing hot into 
heated pits, or burying them in hot sand. After several 
days have passed, it is found that the molecules have slowly 
arranged themselves in their natural position, and the 
strain is entirely removed. 

Paper is about the last thing one would have thought of 
as material for a car- wheel; yet it is very serviceable for 
the purpose, and has been extensively used in this country. 
The " Eailway Age " car, described on a previous page, 
has paper wheels with steel tires. The disk of paper, used in 
the manufacture of a wheel, is subjected to a pressure of a 
ton and a half to the square inch. Among the advantages 
claimed for the wheel are these: it is comparatively noise- 
less, and it does not shrink or spring with the weather. 

After the wheel, the most important things about a car 
are the coupler, buffer, and platform. The sills and the 
platforms of most of the early American cars (but not the 
earliest; see the picture on page 67) were on different levels, 
so that the line of resistance was not the line of great- 
est strength. The consequence was that when collisions 
occurred, telescoping, with all its terrible accompaniments, 
was of the most frequent occurrence. Miller, the inventor 
of the platform, coupling, and spring buffer that go by his 
name, simplj'^ applied to cars the well known principle just 
spoken of, — that the line of resistance should be the line of 
greatest strength. In other words, he elevated the platform 
to a level with the car-sills, and coupled each pair of cars 
compactly and strongly together, so that now, on railroads 
using this platform, telescoping is never heard of. The 
Miller coupling consists of two spring hooks, or massive 



THE TKAIlsr. 227 

clasps of iron, that are automatic in closing, and are un- 
clasped by a hand-worked vertical lever attached* to the 
railing of the platform. 

When the stubborn prejudices of a railway company 
have been so far softened that they decide to adopt the 
Miller platform, they generally go farther and fit up their 
trains with the Westinghouse atmospheric brake, one of the 
most beautiful pieces of mechanism ever invented. The 
first patent of G-eorge Westinghouse was in 1869, and now 
the brake is used on nearly all the chief roads of Europe 
and America. The invention does away with the old wheel 
brakeraan completely, since the entire train of cars can be 
stopped almost instantly by a simple turn of the finger and 
thumb of the engineer. A little steam-engine, afiixed to 
the side of the locomotive, between the driving-wheels, 
operates an air-pump immediately beneath it, by means of 
which air is compressed into a large cylinder placed under 
the cab. From this cylinder a line of air-pipes runs back 
underneath the cars, connecting with a smaller cylinder 
under the centre of each car-floor. When a train is made up, 
the air-<pipes of the cars are coupled by rubber tubes fitted 
at the ends with metallic valves, which are so arranged that 
when the two half- valves are joined they automatically open 
and thus complete a continuous air-tube extending beneath 
the entire train. When the tubes are uncoupled each valve 
automatically closes. Hence it follows that the valve at the 
rear of the train is always closed. Now suppose that by 
some accident a train should part in the middle after the 
engineer had applied the brakes, and suppose that at the 
same time one of the cars thus detached from the locomo- 
tive should jump the track, — the compressed air admitted 
to the cylinder beneath the derailed car before the uncoup- 



228 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

ling occurred would still continue to act with full force 
upon the brakes, and would stop the car in a very short 
time. The forward cars might all plunge down with the 
engine through a broken bridge, or over a precipice, and 
yet the rear cars be brought to a stop by their self-acting 
brakes, before any accident should occur. It is admirable 
to see how quickly a train is stopped by this delicate brake. 
In 1871 a test-case was made on a train of the Kansas 
Pacific road, and it was found that the train when going at 
the rate of forty-five miles an hour could be stopped by the 
Westinghouse brake within a distance of two hundred and 
ten feet, or about four car lengths. 

An amusing incident once happened on the Erie rail- 
road in connection with the atmospheric brake. A train 
going westward was twice brought to a sudden and inexpli- 
cable halt by the application of the air brakes. When the 
train reached Hornell, and while the car-inspector was 
going his rounds, tapping the wheels to test their soundness, 
suddenly he perceived the brakes to be again turned on 
with the well known and unmistakable " sizzing " sound. 
A conference of the train men was now called, and some 
one suggested that a sealed express car be opened. This 
was done, and lo and behold! the mystery was cleared up. 
The car contained a baby elephant that had been consigned 
to a Chicago showman, and his rajahship had been amusing 
himself by pulling the air-brake rope which ran through 
his car. 

The conductor's bell-rope is an American invention. 
The idea was first conceived by William Hambright, 
engineer, in 1833, on the old horse-power railroad between 
Lancaster and Philadelphia, and afterward a conductor on 
the Pennsylvania Central. Hambright affixed a commoli 



THE TRAIN". 229 

door bell to the interior of the engine cab, and ran a rope 
from it backward over the top of the cars. The bell-rope 
at present in use was devised by Captain E. A. Ayres, 
of the Erie railroad. An old engineer of the Erie thus tells 
the story in the New York "Times": 

" Once in a while the conductor found it desirable to 
eject some would-be deadhead passenger while between 
stations, but as there was no way to let the engineer know 
except by sending word by a brakeman, and as he usually had 
to climb over a dozen freight cars before he could attract 
the engineer's attention, it frequently happened that the 
train reached the passenger's destination before it could be 
stopped. ' Pappy ' Ayres, the pioneer Erie conductor, got 
tired of this, and one day he tied a stick of wood to the end 
of a long rope, hung the stick in the engineer's cab, and 
carried the rope over the cars to the rear of the train. His 
idea was to pull the rope and agitate the stick of wood 
when he wanted the engineer to stop the train. He had to 
lick the engineer before the latter would consent to recog- 
nize such an innovation, but it worked to a charm, and led 
to the introduction of the now universal bell and rope 
system of signalling on cars." 

Electric signal bells are in use on the Southeastern rail- 
way of England. The wires of the different cars are joined by 
electric couplings, so that the whole train is in electric con- 
nection. Passengers can signal the guard by pulling out 
from the side of the car a little handle resembling a bell- 
pull. The guards also have their separate set of electric 
signals, and the engine-driver has his. So that a guard can 
either signal a fellow guard or the engineer, as circum- 
stances require. 

Another use for electricity upon trains has been found 



230 WONDEES AKD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

in the lighting of cars. This was first tried in England 
on the Brighton railroad, October 14, 1881. The car used 
for the experiment was a Pullman, and the twelve little 
incandescent lamps employed gave out a fine, mild, equable, 
white light. In the same year a train running from 
Soissons to Paris was lighted by the electric flame, and 
shortly after the first experiment an entire train of Pull- 
man cars on the same railroad was lighted by Edison's 
incandescent lamps. A peculiar method of lighting cars 
was tried recently on a train running through the Thames 
tunnel. It consisted in painting one-half of the car with 
Balmain's phosphorescent paint. The mellow phosphoric 
glow gave out light sufficient for the passengers to read 
their watches by, and proved a very agreeable substitute 
for lamps.* 

The Railway Post-office constitutes an interesting feature 
of the train. It is the invention of the English, the 
mail-car having been used there as early as 1837. Befoi'e 
the adoption of the system in the United States, postal 
matter vi^as carried over railroads and common roads by 
United States mail agents. The first railroad agent was John 
Mitchell, of Baltimore, Md., who was appointed at a salary 
of eight hundred dollars, by the Hon. Amos Kendall (the 
postmaster general in 1837). Mitchell's rpute lay between 
Washington and Philadelphia, and he alternated in the 

* Before passing from the subject of cars and their appointments, we must 
notice anijvel freight car recently invented in Boston It is a non-freezing car 
for the transportation of potatoes in winter, and is provided with a kerosene 
reservoir and stove placed beneath the centre of the car. The reservoir snp- 
plies the stove antomatically with oil, and the heated air is conveyed to air- 
chambers that line the top, bottom, sides, and ends of each car The valve of 
the reservoir is so adjusted that the flow of oil increases as the cold increases. 
Three hundred of these cars have been constructed for the "Down East" 
potato trade, and they are also employed for the transportation of Florida fruits. 



THE TRAIN". 231 

iservice with John E. Kendall, a nephew of the postmaster 
general. 

Our present postal-car service was introduced by Colonel 
George B. Armstrong in 1864, and the first cars fitted up 
on the new system were run between Chicago and Clinton, 
Iowa, and at cibout the same time between Washington and 
New York. The postal-cars are built and owned by the 
railway companies, but ai'e, while in use, under the direct 
control of the government, as represented by its official, the 
general superintendent of the railway mail service. The 
fundamental principle of the service is to furnish all towns, 
both large and small, with rapidly transported mails. For- 
merly the smaller towns along a railroad received their 
mail by slow way-trains. But by the device used for 
exchanging mail bags while the train is in motion, and by 
the plan of distributing and making up packages of mail on 
the train itself, time is saved in every way, and the small 
village is placed on a par with the great city, as respects 
rapid service. 

The American method of exchanging mail-bags differs 
from the English in several respects. Our postal-car 
agent throws out on the ground the mail-bag he wishes 
to leave at a small station, and secures the exchange bag 
by means of a V-shaped iron hook, or " catcher," attached 
to the side of the car; this exchange bag, outside, is sus- 
pended from the arm of a post near the track in such a 
manner that it is caught with a vice-like grip in the 
pinch of the on-rushing V-hook. It requires skill and 
nice calculation to be able to throw out the bags in a 
proper manner when the train is moving rapidly. And 
sometimes a telegraph-pole, a lamp-post, or a switch-light 
is caught instead of the expected bag. This occurs from 



232 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

a mistake of the agent as to his exact locality; so, in 
order that he may be warned in time, the engineer 
usually blows the whistle in a peculiar manner when 
nearing a catching station. The American plan of ex- 
changing mails has been copied in Australia and India. 

In English mail-cars, the leather bag is fastened by 
a spring to an iron bar in the car, and when the ex- 
changing station is near at hand the bar is turned out, 
and the bag hangs suspended like a heavy bait put out 
to catch fish. At the same time the catching apparatus 
for securing the return-bag is put out; this consists of a 
net attached to a bar. In a moment a shai-p jerk is 
heard — the exchange has been effected — one bag drops 
into the roadside net, and at the same moment other 
bags come tumbling into the car-net, which is immedi- 
ately drawn in, and its contents dumped upon the floor, 
ready to be sorted and pigeon-holed by the busy clerks. 

The usual companion of the mail-car, in an Am- 
erican railway train, is the Express-car. The origina- 
tor of the express business in America was William 
F. Harnden. He had been an employe of the old 
Boston and Worcester railroad; but in 1839, being in 
New York and out of employment, he called for advice 
upon James W. Hale, who kept a popular reading room 
in the old Tontine Coffee House, corner of Wall and 
Pearl streets. Mr. Hale advised him to establish himself 
as a messenger, or parcel-carrier, between Boston and 
New York, and suggested the word " Express " as a suit- 
able title for the new business. At that time there were 
no other means of getting valuable parcels to and fro than 
by consigning them to the care of some traveller, who 
was often a complete stranger to the party sending by 



THE TRAIIsr. 233 

him. The idea of an expi'ess business had suggested 
itself to Mr. Hale from the circumstance that inquiries 
were every day made at his reading room for parties going 
to Boston or Providence, who could be induced to carry 
parcels. Harnden acted as advised, and advertised himself 
as an express agent between Boston, Pi'ovidence and New 
York. He travelled by the Sound steamers, and for some 
time a single carpet-bag held all the money and valuables 
consigned to his care; at the present day the express 
business surpasses all other private enterprises in the 
world, with the exception of the railway and the telegraph. 
Harnden died early, 1845, and was buried in Mt. Auburn 
Cemetery, near Boston. 

A rival of Harnden, from 1840 onwards, was the young 
Vermonter, Alvin Adams, founder of the Adams Express 
Company. Most of the wealth of this famous firm was 
got by business done during the Civil War.* 

A small book might be written on the subject of Rail- 
road Tickets alone. But all that is of popular interest can 
be told in a couple of pages. Those little pieces of red, 
yellow, blue, green, chocolate, buff, and pink card-board; 
and those great white tickets thickly studded with numbers, 
letters, and quaint designs, and emblazoned with brilliant 
colors, — did it ever occur to you to estimate the immense 
number of them that must be used by the railways of the 
world? Think of the permutations necessary in devising 
tickets for a road with, say, ninety-eight stations. The 
agent at each of these stations must be able to furnish 



* Founders of other Express Companies were Henry Wells (atone time an 
assistant of Harnden) and Wm. G. Fargo. The baggage and transfer business 
was started in New York city in 1852 by Warren Studley and his brother, to 
whom succeeded Mr. Dodd. For further particulars of the express business 
see " Harper's Monthly '' for IStS, page 314. 



234 WONDERS AN"D CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

a ticket to every other, and no two tickets must be 
alike. For ninety-eight stations, then, you must have 
four thousand four hundred different tickets. Indeed, 
the number is so great that no conductor ever learns to 
know them all critically. There are six firms in the 
United States legitimately engaged in the manufacture 
of railway tickets; and a single one of these, located in 
Boston, prints for New England roads seventeen million 
local tickets in one year, their machine turning out from 
twelve thousand to thirty-two thousand an hour.* 

In the early days of the railway, no tickets at all were 
used, the receipt of the booking-clerk serving as evidence 
of the payment of the fare. The first printed tickets were 
invented and issued about 1836 by a man named John Ed- 
mondson, who was then employed at a little wayside railway 
station in the neighborhood of Carlisle, England. His print- 
ing apparatus was of a very simple and primitive kind, 
consisting of a few types fastened together in a case about 
the size of a nail-brush. The name of the station to which 
the passenger was going was written upon the ticket at the 
time of its issue. Edmondson found his device a very use^ 
ful one, and kept inventing new machinery and increasing 
his business, until it became a great industry, and tickets 
were printed by his establishment for railways all over the 
world. t The sons of Edmondson still carry on this immense 
business at Manchester. The most important stride in 
advance was made when the tickets were consecutively 
numbered, for the accuracy of railway accounts depends 

* For many of these facts relating to railway tickets, the author is indebted 
to Mr. Robert S. Gardiner, of Boston. 

t The greater part of French and Spanish railway tickets are printed by De 
la Rne, of Paris, and Sampson, Low and Company, of London. The great Eng- 
lish railways print their own tickets. Mexico, Cuba, and South America get a 
portion of their tickets in the United States. 



THE TRAIN. 235 

on the careful numbering and counting of tickets. Ed- 
mondson's perfected steam-power machine was an exceed- 
ingly ingenious and delicate little piece of mechanism. 
He had a small table with a long, thin box rising above it 
at the back, and another box falling below it in front. The 
table contained the printing machinery and type-case, while 
the boxes were for holding tickets, and were just as wide as 
a ticket. The upper box was filled with a pile of card- 
board pieces, and one at a time the lowest cards were jerked 
by a spring under the printing machinery, and then passed 
to the lower box; the process for each ticket required less 
than a second of time; all that the attendant had to do was 
to keep the upper box filled with cards, remove the lower 
box when filled, supply fresh boxes, pile the finished tickets 
in rows, and see that the ink reservoir was full. The num- 
bering was done by wheels with raised numerals on their 
edges; the wheel which had on its edge the first nine num- 
erals moved so that a fresh type was ready for each suc- 
cessive ticket; the wheel in the tens' place at one tenth that 
rate, and so on. The testing of the tickets for correct num- 
bering was also done by machinery; for the apparatus was 
so contrived that if the numbering did not go forward in 
perfect order, a spring was released which rang a bell of 
warning. The past tense has been used in describing this 
mechanism, because, although the essential principle of it 
is still embodied in the machines now used, there have been 
a great many changes made in the way of improvements. 

The first consecutively numbered tickets in America 
were printed for Sanford, Harroun and Warren, of Buf- 
falo, by George Bailey, who Avas sent over by Edmondson 
with one of his machines. This was in 1855. Previous to 
this, tickets were plain unnumbered pieces of card-board 



236 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

good for a single passage. As late as 1860 such tickets 
were used on the Boston and Providence railroad. The 
cheap-excursion-ticket system was invented by Josiah Per- 
ham of Maine, known by his long agitation of the question 
of a Northern Pacific railroad. One of the curiosities, or 
mysteries, of the ticket-system is the fact that five per cent 
of the tickets issued never return to the company issuing 
them. What becomes of them? Is it possible that so large 
a number are never used at all? 

It remains to speak of coupon-tickets, which are the in- 
vention of a gentleman named Hebbard. He was, or is, a 
civil engineer connected with the United States Navy. The 
tickets were first used on the Baltimore and Ohio road, 
and at first excited gi'eat opposition and ridicule. But the 
merriment was ill-timed, for they have now become a neces- 
sity as well as a convenience to travellers. In order to 
prgvent the counterfeiting of coupons the best work of the 
bank-note engraver is called into requisition. This is par- 
ticularly necessary since coupon-tickets go all over the land, 
and are handled by sellers and agents far removed from the 
roads in the combination. The necessity for a coupon- 
ticket arises from the circumstance that between two dis- 
tant points there are often several lines of railway. The 
traveller does not wish to get off the train every six hours, 
and at any time of day or night, to purchase a new ticket. 
Hence a combination of roads agree to issue a joint ticket. 
Where there are fifty or sixty diff"erent routes between two 
great cities it is a difficult science to work out the rates and 
combinations satisfactorily to all concerned. The shortest 
line in a combination always fixes the rate, i.e., the longer 
lines between two points must carry a passenger at the same 
rate as the shortest one. A semi-annual convention of gen- 



THE TRAIK. 237 

eral passenger agents is held for the determining of coupon 
rates, and a rate-sheet is made out, apportioning to each 
section of a through route the share decreed it on the divi- 
sion of the money received by the selling road. Each 
month, tickets and coupons are collected and interchanged, 
and a balancing of accounts takes place. 

The collector of tickets, or the conductor, as he is called 
in America, is a much abused man, and a much enduring 
man. There are brutal conductors, and there are gentle- 
manly conductors, some are hard and unobliging, and others 
are kind and tender-hearted. Many ai'e profligate, and 
many are noble in character; — on the whole, a body of 
men popular, generous, and brave. More kind acts of con- 
ductors pass unrecorded than would be imagined. Not long 
ago as a conductor on a western railroad was standing on 
the step of one of his cars which was in rapid motion, he 
saw on the opposite track an old man walking with his back 
to the Chicago Express which was rushing upon him with 
lightning speed only a few rods off. It flashed across the 
mind of the conductor that he could save the old man by 
jumping so as to hurl himself against him; the thought he 
embodied in the act, caught the man in his arms, and landed 
him safely in the ditch, both being by good luck unhurt. 
This is only one out of many similar acts by conductors. 
But on the other side we have such experiences as that of 
Mr. John A. Coleman of Providence, Rhode Island, who was 
brutall}'' ejected by a conductor from a train on the New 
York and New Haven railroad, received severe injuries, 
and, after a long fight of four years in the courts, received 
three thousand five hundred dollars damages.* Mr. Cole- 

* He tells his story in a fascinating style in tlie "Atlantic Monthly " for De- 
cember, 1873, and May, 1873. (" The Fight of a Man with a Railroad." 



238 WONDERS AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

man had a coupon good on its face for a ride from New 
Haven to New York, and, although having a through ticket 
in his pocket, he determined to make a test case and see if 
his ticket were not good from New Yoi'k to New Haven. 
The conductor said he had been ordered by his directors 
not to receive such tickets, and after some debate he and 
his roughs forcibly ejected Mr. Coleman from the train. 
During 'the terrible struggle the flesh was torn from the 
arm and legs of the resisting passenger, he was ruptured 
for life, and finally thrown heavily upon his side on the 
platform. The damages awarded him were for brutal as- 
sault, not for the refusal of the road to take the coupon; 
but the courts have now pretty generally decided that a 
railway ticket is good either way. 

The embezzlements of fares by conductors are enormous; 
and many railways employ " spotters," or spies, to detect 
them in their frauds. At one time the New York Central 
employed women spotters who were furnished with books 
of instructions, note books, an apparatus of mirrors placed 
at an angle, and other traps. A set of these implements 
was captured by the employes of one of the trains, and 
afforded them much merriment. In 1866, a certain rail- 
road, leading out of Boston, discharged every passenger con- 
ductor in its employ, and put on the road new men wholly 
unused to the work. The next month's receipts showed an 
addition of thirty-three per cent; and there had been no 
increase of travel. In January, 1882, seventeen spotters 
sent out from New York detected many cases of neglect on 
the part of conductors of western railroads to give rebate 
checks for cash fares. A rebate check serves as an indica- 
tion of fare received by conductor, when it is presented at 
an office for payment. But some of the conductors said the 



THE TEAIK. 339 

plan was an imputation on their honesty, and refused to 
obey orders. The consequence was that one thousand of 
them were discharged at once by the managers of the sev- 
eral western railroads lying between St. Louis and Denver. 
In the single year 1863, the conductors of the Philadelphia 
and Reading railroad embezzled about eighty thousand dol- 
lars. After three years' employment of Allan Pinkerton^ 
detective system, the peculations per annum were reduced 
to about five thousand dollars. 

Railways not only suffer from conductors' appropria- 
tions, but from the depredations of petty sneak thieves 
among humbler employes, as well as from the bold rob- 
beries of the masked Claude Duvals of the day. In Eng- 
land the open freight cars especially invite pilfering. A 
few years ago the Midland Railway Company discovered 
that their trains were being robbed of wine. Casks arriv- 
ing at the North were found to be broached, and no one 
knew how it came about. The company determined to con- 
ceal spies on one of their wine trains, and see if they could 
not ferret out the secret. Nothing occurred to excite sus- 
picion until the train reached a certain tunnel at a lonely 
part of the road. Here the train was stopped, and the 
engineer, assisted by a signalman, threw back the tarpaulin 
from one of the freight wagons, broached a cask of wine, 
drew off a quantity in buckets, and passed it around to all 
the employes. After a jolly bout by the company, the cloth 
was replaced and the train steamed onward. Cheeses also 
seem to offer a peculiar temptation to the English train 
thief, and many a fat dairy cheese has rolled down into 
ditch or hedge, whence it could afterward be taken away at 
night. 

A train robbery of a peculiarly dare-devil nature oc- 



240 WONDEES AND CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

curred in England not long ago. A noble family leaving 
London for the east coast had a brass- bound box, contain- 
ing a selection of plate, placed on the roof of their car and 
securely covered with tarpaulin. The train was an after- 
noon express which stopped at only three or four large 
stations during the w^hole journey, and arrived at its desti- 
nation two hours after dark. The box seemed absolutely 
safe, and no one dreamed of a possible robbery, until when 
the coast was reached, it was discovered that a goodly por- 
tion of the plate had been abstracted. Upon investigation, 
it appeared that a suspicious-looking character had tele- 
graphed from London in cipher to an individual at a certain 
way station. When the train arrived at this station, the 
man who had received the telegram boarded the train, 
being shown by the guard into an empty compartment. 
Now, as soon as it was dark, this man must have accom- 
plished the almost incredible feat of traversing the cars 
between him and the box, while the train was going at the 
rate of forty miles an hour; then mounted to the roof of 
the last car, unfastened the tarpaulin, selected the brass- 
bound box out of twenty or thirty other packages, without 
exciting the attention of those within the car, forced it 
open, disposed about his clothing as many pieces of plate 
as he could carry, refastened the tarpaulin, and retraced 
his steps safe and undetected to his own car. At the next 
station he left the train, carrying a bulky portmanteau, 
and was not heard of more. 

At a certain large freight depot in England, a great 
many articles were at o-ne time missed, chiefly parcels of 
medium size and weight. One day while walking about 
the freight-house, intent upon other business, the superin- 
tendent noticed that in a certain place some of the boards 



THE TRAIN". 341 

that faced the space between the ground and the floor of 
the platform — a height of about three feet — looked as if 
they had recently been removed. On trying them he found 
that they yielded easily, exposing to view the dark cavity 
within. This he proceeded to explore, crawling in on his 
hands and knees, and taking a dark lantern with him. 
Presently he emerged with a grin of satisfaction on his face, 
remarking to his man that he thought he should catch his 
thief now. He replaced the planking, and late the same 
night, unknown to any one but his assistant, entered the 
cavity, which was so narrow and low that he was obliged to 
lie at full length. About three or four o'clock in the morn- 
ing, when the noises of the coming day's labor and traffic 
were beginning to be heard, he was awfire of the sounds of 
footsteps approaching the spot; his heart beat quick with 
excitement; the sound of the footsteps ceased opposite his 
hiding-place; there was a moment's pause and then the 
boards wei'e pushed aside, and a hand holding a parcel tied 
up with a string and brown paper was thrust into the hole. 
There was just light enough from the lamps near at hand 
for him to see what he was about; he had previously got 
his handcuffs out, and had fastened one ring of them round 
one of the iron supports of the platform. "The moment 
the fellow thrust his hand into the hole," said the superin- 
tendent afterward, " I knocked the parcel out of his fingers, 
grasped him firmly by the wrist, gave him a sudden jerk for- 
ward, and before he could say Jack Robinson the other ring 
of the handcuffs was slipped on to him, and there he was in 
as nice a little trap as ever I saw." He proved to be a man 
who came on duty early to help load up market goods. He 
had generally taken the parcels while the watchman was 
absent for a moment unlocking the offices, and had hidden 
16 



242 WONDERS AND CUEIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

tbem temporarily under some boxes until he could safely 
remove them to the hole under the platform. 

, Another ingenious trick of train-thieves was tried in 
North Germany, where a railway company had long suffered 
from depredations without being able to detect the criminal. 
One day a box labelled, " This Side Up," came into the 
freight-house; but the employes, disregarding the direction, 
happened to set it upside down. Some time afterward they 
were astonished to hear a smothered voice apparently pro- 
ceeding from the box, and begging those near at hand to let 
the owner of the voice out. On opening the box — heigho! 
a man inside standing on his head! When he. got on his 
legs he tried to persuade the officials that his presence in 
the box was the result of a bet he had made. But the story 
would not " take," and it was soon discovered that this was 
the method the thieves had taken to secure their booty. 
All that the imprisoned man had to do was to let himself 
out of the box during the absence of the employes, then fill 
it with whatever he could lay his hands on, fasten down the 
cover, leave the box to be forwarded to the address marked 
on it, and then decamp as quickly as possible. 

A single specimen of our western train robberies will 
suffice for hundreds of similar ones. The eastward-bound 
train on the Missouri Pacific railroad left Otterville, 
Missouri, a few minutes past ten o'clock on Friday night, 
July 7, 1876, and when two and a half miles east of that 
place, the engineer perceived in a deep cut the signal- 
light for stopping. He applied the air-brakes, and presently 
saw a pile of ties and timber on the track. At the same 
moment a dozen masked men dashed up to the train, 
uttering terrific yells and discharging their pistols. Two 
of them, jumping on the engine, covered the engineer 



THE TRAIIST. 243 

and fireman with navy revolvers, and then marched them 
into the baggage-car, where they were placed under guard. 
While this was going on, three other robbers had climbed 
into the express-car; but the express messenger, Bushnell, 
had already dashed through the train to the sleeping-car 
in the x'ear, and made one of the brakemen put the keys 
of the safe in his boot. Mr. Conkling, the baggage-man 
of the train, was in the express-car when the robbers 
entered, and him they marched with a revolver at his 
head slowly through the train, commanding him to point 
out the messenger when he saw him. The women and 
children were in great fear, and many even of the male 
passengers crouched down behind the seats. When the 
keys were obtained the Adams safe was opened, and the 
contents placed in a wheat-sack, which had been brought 
for the purpose. One of the safes could not be opened 
with the keys, and one of the villains obtained a pick 
from the engine-cab and forced open the panel. All this 
time the rest of the thieves were parading up and down 
outside of the train, yelling and firing off their revolvers. 
The passengers were unarmed, and no resistance was 
made. About sixteen thousand dollars was carried ofi^ 
and although several parties of men started out in pursuit, 
the chase was rather a hopeless one. 

We have now finished our survey of the railroad system 
of the world. Much has been left unsaid. We have not 
considered many of the more conspicuous faults of railroads 
— • the corrupt pass system, dangerous tracks, wretched 
restaurants, badly ventilated cars,* arrogance and surli- 

* " Five hundred, inches of openings to permit the escape of one and a half 
million cubic inches of foul air exhaled from the lungs of fifty human beings 
in one hour! " 



244 WONDERS AISTD CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. 

ness of officials, unjust rates, cruel combinations against 
the farmers, discrimination in favor of individuals and 
monopolizing firms, and the corruption of voters and 
legislatures. Nor have we entered upon the topic of 
railway accidents (eight thousaiid two hundred and fifteen 
persons either killed or maimed in one year in the United 
States!). Not that many wonderful and curious things 
would not have been ploughed up in treating of these 
themes; but the adequate pi'esentation of them would not 
only have unduly swelled the proportions of the volume, 
but would have launched us upon an endless ocean of 
political and statistical discussion. 

What is to be the future of the steam locomotive, it 
is hard to predict, in view of the possibilities of air- 
navigation, and the introduction of electric and other 
motors. But there is no permanent diminution of railway 
construction; rather an enormous increase, and it is 
certain that as long as men are obliged to draw heavy 
loads over rough and muddy ground, a solid rail will 
be preferred to a rut. It is, therefore, almost certain 
that the locomotive will go on conquering and to conquer 
until its sway extends over the three great continents of 
the globe not yet netted with iron roads. And it is to 
be hoped that there will be a corresponding increase in 
safety-devices, and in plans for adding architectural beauty 
to the railway buildings now so unsightly, as well as 
landscape adornment to the grounds now so barren of 
cultivation. 



IISTDEX. 



Accidents and locomotive engi- 
neers, 204. 

Accidents, railway, 244. 

Acropolis, the, 90. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 4 
(note), 22 (note), 223. 

Adams, Alvin, 233. 

Adams, William and Company, 
146, 147. 

Adhesive power of electric loco- 
motive, 166. 

" Advertiser," the Boston, 59. 

Africa, railroads in, 98-100. 

Albany, 32, 47, 51, 52, 61. 

Albany and Schenectady railroad, 
10. 

Aleppo, 116. 

Alexandretta, 116. 

Alleghany Mountains, 127. 

Allen, Horatio, 36, 37, 38, 77. 

Allen, W. F., 88. 

Allier, M., 20. 

Ambulances, railway, 181, 182. 

"American Architect," the, 176. 

American House, Boston, 151. 

" Ampere, " the (electric locomo- 
tive), 165. 

Apaches, the, 73. 

"Arabian," the, 76, 77. 

Arago, M., 20. 

Archbishop, a French, 16. 

Armored railway train, 187, 188. 

Armstrong, Colonel Geo. B., 231. 

Arth Rigi railway, 130. 

Asleep on an engine, 203. 

Atlanta, Georgia, 118. 

Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line, 
122. 

Atlanta campaign, 180, 184. 



"Atlantic Monthly," 140, 237 

(note). 
Atmospheric railways, 120, 121. 
Automatic signals, 220. 
Ayers, Captain E. A., 229. 



Back Bay, Boston, 152. 
Bailey, George, 235. 
Baldwin, Cyrus W., 147. 
Baldwin Locomotive Works, 197. 
Baldwin, W. W., of Philadelphia, 

52. 
Balmain's phosphorescent paint, 

230. 
Baltimore and Ohio railroad, 33, 

39-45, 76, 77. 
Baseom, C. J., 121. 
Bathing ears, 189. 
Bays^'ater, London, 172. » 
Belfast and Northern Counties 

railroad, 162. 
Bell-rope, the conductor's, 228, 

229. 
" Ben. Franklin," the old, 206, 

207. 
" Bentley's Miscellany," 25. 
Benton, Thomas H., 68 (note). 
Berlin, 197. 

Berlin Exhibition, electric rail- 
road at, 160. 
"Best Friend," the, 45, 46. 
Betteley, Albei't, 147, 148. 
Bicycle railways, 116, 176, 177. 
Birkenhead (England), 172. 
"Bite "of the wheel, 32. 
Blair's Gap, 128. 
Block system, 219, 220. 
Booking passengers, 56. 
"Boston, Memorial History of," 



245 



246 



IITDEX. 



4 (note); and the new time- 
standard, 89. 

Boston and Albany (formerly 
called Boston and Worcester], 
57 (note), 59, 60. 

Boston and Lowell railroad, 10, 

58, 59, 60. 

Boston and Maine railroad, 207, 

216. 
Boston and Providence railroad, 

59, 60, 61, 236, 

Boston and Worcester railroad 
(see Boston and Albany). 

Boudoir cars, the Mann, 195. 

Bound Brook route, 197. 

Box, man inside a, 242. 

Brazil, inclined railway in, 132. 

Breck, Samuel, 22, 189. 

Brenner railroad, 134-137. 

"Brigades " of cai's, 54. 

Bristol and Exeter railroad, 202. 

Brooman, Richard A., 150, 151. 

Brown, William H., 47. 

Brunei, I. K., 197. 

Brunton, William, his locomotive 
with legs, 8. 

Bryant, Gridley, 33, 59. 

Buckingham, Joseph T., 58. 

Buenos Ayres, 173. 

BuflfalonNew York, 4. 

Buffer, the first, 50, 51. 

Bull Run, defeat of, 179. 

Bull, the, and the engine, 65, 

Bunker Hill Monument, 33. 

Burleigh, Charles, of Fitchburg, 
138. 

Burning-glass, 12, 

Burnt Mill Point, 85, 

" Burthen " cars, 54. 

"Busy Bee," the, 202, 203, 

Bwlffa coal, 112, 



Cab (of locomotive), 200. 
Cable railways, 173, 174. 
Calcutta, 94, 95. 
Callao, Lima and Oroya railroad, 

141. 
Camborne, 7. 
Cambridge (Massachusetts), first 

horse railroad in, 172. 



"Camel-backs," 199. 

Canadian Pacific railroad, 73. 

Capture of a Locomotive, 185- 
188. 

Car, first passenger (the " Ex- 
periment"), 9; Stephenson's 
first passenger, 10; the eight- 
wheeled, 33; with sails, 39, 
121, 122; the "Victory," 54; 
telegraphic, 122, 123; dyno- 
graph, 124; bathing, 189; mak- 
ing of a wheel, 225; " Railway 
Age," 193, 226; postal, 230; 
express, 233. 

Carbondale, 125. 

Cars, luxurious, 191-193; pal- 
ace and sleeping, 193-195; 
smoking, 195; Mann boudoir, 
195; lighting by electricity, 
229, 230; lightiisg by phos- 
phorescent paint, 230. 

Caste 96. 

Cenisi Mt., 127; railway, 138. 

Central Pacific railroad, 71, 72. 

Central Park, New York city, 
174. 

" Century Magazine," see " Scrib- 
ner's." 

Ceylon, 90. 

Chambers's Journal, 135, 

Chard and Taunton Railroad 
Company, 202. 

Charing Cross Hotel, 152. 

Charleston and Hamburg rail- 
road, 45-47, 

Charleston, Massachusetts, 34, 

Chai'lottenburg and Spandau 
electric railroad, 160, 161. 

Chased by a locomotive, 206, 207. 

Chat Moss, 19 (note), 

Chattahoochee, 184, 

Cheltenham, 8, 

Chicago, 88 ; first railroad out of^ 
70 ; Railway Exposition at, 75 ; 
cable railways in, 173. 

Chicago Exposition, electric rail- 
way at, 164. 

Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
railroad, 69 (note), 

Childs, Colonel, 198. 

Chilian laborers, 143. 



INDEX, 



34? 



China, first and only railroad in, 
93. 

Chinese laborers, 143. 

Chota-hazare, the, 95. 

Cincinnati inclined railways, 131. 

Cincinnati, Sandusky and Cleve- 
land raih'oad, 62. 

Civil war (American), railways in 
the, 184. 

Claphara Junction, 323. 

Clark, John T., 48. 

Clay, Henrv, 62. 

Clergue, F.' H., 132. 

Clinton, Iowa, 231. 

Coleman, John A., 237, 238. 

Coleman, Robert, 118. 

Cologne, 5. 

Columbia, Pennsylvania, 127, 128. 

Conductors, 237, 238. 

"Consolidations," 199. 

Cooper, Peter, his first locomo- 
tive, 38-45. 

Coupon tickets, 236, 237. 

Cox, Jacob D., 184. 

"Cow-catcher," a novel, 63. 

Cumberland River, 182. 



Daft, Leo, 164-167, 173 (note). 

Darlington, 21; Semi-centennial 
of the railroad at, 12, 13; 
Stockton and Darlington rail- 
road, 8-13. 

Darrell, Nicholas W., 46. 

Davidson, George, 76. 

Deadhead, 229. 

Dearborn, Benjamin, 56, 57. 

De la Rue, Paris, 284 (note). 

Delaware and Hudson canal, and 
the company, 35, 36, 125. 

Delaware River railway, 86, 87. 

Denver, 239. 

Denver and Rio Grande railroad, 
74, 141 (note). 

Depots, railwav, 214-216. 

Deprez, M. Marcel, 159. 

Despatcher. train, 218, 219. 

Detmold, C. E., 46. 

" De Witt Clinton," the old loco- 
motive, 47-51. 



Dickens, Charles, on the English 

refreshment room, 107, 108; 

description of Mugby Junction, 

215 (note). 
Dodd, Mr., 233 (note). 
Dorchester, 59. 
Double-order system, 219. 
Dry Dock railwav in New York 

city, 35. 
Dudley, P. H., 124. 
Du Moneel, 158. 
Dymond, Mr. R., 197. 
Dynograph car, 124. 



Eads, Captain James B., 119, 120. 

East Indian railroad, 94, 95. 

Edison, Thomas Alva, 162-164. 

Edison's lamps on cars, 230. 

Eggieston, N. H., 140. 

Edmonson, John, 234. 

Eight-wheeled car, 33. 

Electric air-ship of Tissandier 
Brothers, 159. 

Electric railway of Chicago Ex- 
position, 75. 

" Electric Review," the, 166, 

Electrical road car, 161. 

Electricity for lighting cars, 229, 
230. 

Electric signal bells, 229. 

Electro-magnets, on Daft locomo- 
tives, 165, 166, 173 (note). 

Elephant, the baby, 228. 

Elevated railways, that of Colonel 
Stevens, 32; Ohio Railroad 
Company's, 115, 116; in cities, 
174^177. 

Elevator, passenger. Chapter IX, 
passim. 

Ellithorpe, Colonel A. C, 155. 

Embezzlements of fai'es, 238. 

Emmons, Danforth and Scudder, 
147. 

Engine-cleaner, story of the, 202. 

Engine-cleaners, the, 202. 

Engineer, life of a locomotive, 
203, 204. 

Engineers, the rival, 28, 29. 

Englishman, anecdote of the, in 
Cologne, 45. 



248 



INDEX. 



English railways, 109-113. 

Ericsson, 18. 

Erie railroad, 217, 228, 229. 

Eugenie, Empress, 190. 

Evans, Oliver, 30, 31, 57. 

Excursion ticket, Josiah Perham 
inventor of, 136. 

Exhibition, see Exposition. 

•" Experiment," the, 9. 

Exposition, National, of Rail- 
way Appliances, 75, 76. 

Express car system, 232, 233. 



Fargo, William G., 233 (note). 

Favre, Louis, 138. 

Fields, Mr., 164. 

Fifth Avenue Hotel, 148. 

Fight of a man with a railroad, 

237. 
Fight for a locomotive, 208-211. 
Fires, forest and prairie, 79, 80. 
Fiske, Lieutenant Bradley A., 

168. 
Fitchburg, 138. 
Fitch burg railroad (see Hoosac 

tunnel), 138-141. 
Florence, 215. 
Fluid-retarder, 150. 
"Flying Dutchman," the, 46, 

197. 
Flying locomotive, 121. 
Forest Fires, 79, 80. 
Foster, Raswiek and Company, of 

Stourbridge, 36. 
Fox, Charles, 18. 
France, railway travel in, 107, 

108; no military railway organ- 
ization in, 182, "183. 
Francis's "History of Railways," 

23. 
Franco-Prussian War, 179-183. 
Frankfort, 62, 63, 64. 
Freight cars, early, 54. 
Funicular counterpoise railways, 

130, 131. 

G 

Galloway, Tom., 77. 

Gardiner, Robert S., 234 (note). 



Gauges, 213, 214. 
Georgia campaign, 180. 
Germans, the, and their railways 

in war, 180-184. 
Germany, railways in, 104-106. 
Giant's Causeway, 162. 
Giessbaeh, railroad on the, 131. 
Gillis, Judge J. L., 48-51. 
Glasgow, 8, 24. 

Gloucester, 8; New Jersey, 118. 
Grand C/anon of the Arkansas, 

74. 
Grand Central Depot, 221. 
Grand Junction railway, 217. 
Granite railway, old, 33-35, 57, 

59. 
Grasshopper engines, 6. 
Gray, Thomas, 14. 
Gravity railroad, the, of Maueh 

Chunk, 35. 
Great Wabash railroad, 64r-66. 
Great Western railroad (England), 

197. 
Green Mountain inclined rail- 
way (Mt. Desert), 131, 133. 
Greenville, New Jersey, 164. 
Gregori, M. Louis, 183 (note). 
"Grip and Go," 199. 
Gunnison, Black Canon of the, 

75. 
Gurney, Goldsworthy, 8. 

H 

Hadrian's Villa, 90. 
Hailstorm, wonderful, 80-82. 
Hale, Edward Everett, 57 (note). 
Hale, James W., 232. 
Hale, Nathan, 57, 58. 
Harabright, William, 228. 
Hamilton, Gail, 68 (note). 
Haraley, Colonel, 179. 
Harlem railroad corporation, 171. 
Harnden, William F., 232. 
Harper and Brothers, 146 (text 

and note). 
"Harper's Monthly Magazine," 

145 (note), 185 (note), 233 (note). 
"Harper's Weekly," 166 (note). 
Harvard Observatory, 89. 
Harvey, Charles T., 175. 



INDEX. 



249 



Hawk, story of the, and the loeo- 
inotiTe smoke, 200. 

Haywood, Mr. Percival, 119. 

Hecker, Mr., 146. 

" Herald," the Boston Sunday, 40 
(note). 

Herbert, Sir Henry, 16. 

Hindley, Charles, '62. 

Hitchcock, Hirain, 149. 

"Holein the Wall," 221. 

Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, 128. 

Holyhead, Wales, 203. 

Hone, Philip, 36. 

Honesdale, 35, 36. 

Honesdale and Carbondale rail- 
road, 35-38. 

Hoosao Tunnel railway, 138-141. 

Hornell, New York, 228. 

Horse-power car, 39. 

Horse railroads (see Street rail- 
roads). 

Hudson, George, 28, 29. 

Hugo, Victor, 2. 

Huskisson, Mr., 18. 

Hydraulic elevators, 152-154. 



Inclined railways, 52, 64. 

Indiana, Bloomington and West- 
ern railroad, 62. 

India, railways in, 94^98. 

Indians, the, of North America; 
their attacks on raikoads, 77- 
79 ; as railroad-hands, 78. 

Interlocking towers, cabins, and 
switches, 221-223. 

Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 119. 

Italian war, railways utilized in, 
180. 

J 

Jacksonville, Illinois, 66. 
Japan, railroads in, 91-93. 
Jervis, John B., 36, 200. 
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 128. 
Join vi lie. Prince de, 149. 
Juniata, 128. 

K 

Kansas Pacific railroad, 121, 123, 

228. 



Kemble, Mrs. Frances, 19 (note). 
Kendall, Amos A., 230. 
Kentucky, first i-ailroad in, 62, 

64. 
Kentucky River, the, 63. 
Kerosene, for oiling track, 206. 
Kiowa, Kansas, 80. 
Krudener, Baron, 39. 



Lackawaxen River, 37. 

Lake Erie, 32. 

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 228. 

Land and Pritehett, Messrs., 116. 

Land-grant, the first railway, 70. 

Land-slide on Central Pacific, 72. 

Langham Hotel, 152. 

Latrobe, H. H., 43. 

Lexington, Kentucky, 63, 63. 

Lexington. Kentucky, railroad, 
62-64. 

Lichterfelde, 161. 

Light, Charles L., 172. 

Lighting ears by electricity and 
phosphorescent paint, 230. 

Lincoln, President, 186. 

" Lippincott's Magazine," 206. 

Liverpool, 14. 

Liverpool and Manchester rail- 
road, 14-19, 21. 

Locomotive, first steam, 6; huge 
one for Southern Pacific road, 
76; landed in Ceylon, 90; on 
sled-runners, 114, 115; two- 
wheeled, 118; flying, 121; the 
"Ampere," 165; capture of a, 
185-188; general features of 
the. Chapter XIII ; appetite of, 
201; straw-burning and petro- 
leum-burning, 200 ; average 
life of, 201 ; repairing, 201, 202; 
engineer, 203, 204; chased by 
a, 206; a runaway, 207; fight 
for a, 208-211. 

Locomotives, road, 7, 8; features 
of early (driving-wheels, head- 
light, etc.), 54; quaint early, 
76, 77; electric. Chapter X, 
passim; English, 199; Ameri- 
can, 199, 200. 

Logging railway, 117. 



250 



IliTDEX. 



London, England, 25; under- 
ground railway in, 111-113; 
railroad viaducts in, 174, 175; 
electric railways in, 166, 167: 
interlocking switch system of, 
221-223. 

London and Brighton railroad, 
230. 

Loubat, M., 171, 172. 

Lowell, Massachusetts, 207. 

Lowell and Nashua railroad, 217, 
218. 

Lunches eaten in cars, 106, 108. 

Lyons, France, cable railways of, 
131. 

M 

MacMahon, 179. 

Mad River and Lake Erie rail- 
road, the, 62. 

Maidstone, England, 8. 

Manassas railroad, 179. 

Manchester, 15, 24. 

Manhattan Elevated Railroad 
Company, 174, 176. 

Manias railway, 23-30. 

Mann boudoir cars, 195. 

Marchioness, the, 26-28. 

Marie Louise, 190. 

Marine railway, 119, 120. 

Marsh, Sylvester, 129. 

Massachusetts, early railroads in, 
56-61. 

Massachusetts Electric Power 
Company, 165. 

Massachusetts, whimsical report 
of the House of Representa- 
tives of, 176. 

Matthews, David, 77. 

Mauch Chunk gravity railroad, 
126. 

Medhurst, 120. 

Meiggs, Henry, 141, 142, 

Menlo Park, New Jersey, 162. 

Meredosia, 64, 65. 

Merrimack River, 57. 

Merryweather, locomotive maker, 
173. 

Mesgriny, 200. 

Metucher, 164. 

Metz, 183. 



Mexican Central railroad, 73, 74. 

Michigan Central railroad, 66, 67 ; 
train lost on, 84. 

Michigan Southern railroad, 84. 

Middlesex canal, 57. 

Midland railway, 239. 

Milan, 215. 

Miller coupler, buffer, and plat- 
form, 226, 227. 

Minot, Charles, 217. 

Mish-Mish, the, 99. 

Missouri Pacific railway, robbery 
of train on the, 242, 243. 

Mitchell, John, 230. 

Mobile and Ohio railroad, 70. 

"Moguls," 199. 

Mohawk and Hudson railroad, 
47, 52. 

Monitor car, the first, 54. 

Monotony, Kansas, 80. 

Montgomery, J. E., 143. 

Moore and Wyman, 151. 

Moore, Tom, 126. 

Moosic Mountains, 125. 

Morris, Gouverneur K., 32. 

Motoneer, the, 166. 

Movable truck, 33. 

Mt. Cenis (see Cenis). 

Mt. Desert railway, 131, 132. 

Mt. Washington railway. New 
Hampshire, 129, 130. 

Mugby Junction, 215 (note). 

Mules, riding on cars, 35. 

Mummies, 201. 

Murdock, his first engine, 6. 

Mushrooms, stopping of a train 
by, 198. 

N 

Nantygolyn, 208. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 180, 189, 

190. 
Napoleon HI, 190, 191. 
Narrow gauge roads, 214. 
Nazareth, change cars for, 90. 
Neponset River, 34. 
New York, 4, 221. 
New York and Brooklyn bridge, 

cable railroad over, 173, 174. 
New York and Chicago Limited, 

198. 



INDEX. 



351 



New York and Harlem railroad, 
10, 169-171. 

New York Central railroad, 52, 
69, 238 ; sleeping cars on, 194. 

New York Elevated Railroad Com- 
pany, 175 (compare elevated 
railways). 

North-eastern Eailway Company 
of England, 76. 

Northern Cross railroad, 64. 

Northern Pacific railroad, 73, 236. 

Norway, railways in, 102. 

"Notes and Queries," 197. 

"Novelty," 18. 



Ohio, 62. 

■"Old Ironsides," 52-54. 
Otis Brothers, 154. 
Otis, E. G., 146. 
"OwdNeddy,"8. 



Page, Professor C. G., 159, 160. 

Paine, Colonel William H., 174. 

Paisley, 8, 24. 

Palais de I'Industrie, 161. 

Pan, 95. 

Papin, of Blois, 120. 

Paris Exposition (1878), 152. 

Paris Exposition (1881), 161. 

Parker House, Boston, accident 
at, 155. 

Passy, M., 20. 

Paterson, New Jersey, 62. 

Pease, Edward ("Owd Neddy"), 8. 

Pennsylvania Central railroad, 
69, 164, 175, 179 (note), 197, 
220, 228; mountain division, 
129; history of, by Dredge, 129 
(note). 

Pennsylvania Coal Company, 126. 

Pennsylvania, first railroad-train 
in, 52-54. 

"Pennsylvania Magazine of His- 
tory and Biography," 1 29 (note). 

Perdonnet, M. Auguste, 19. 

Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, 33. 

" Pei'severance," the, 18. 

Peru, 141. 



Petroleum for locomotives, 200. 

Phelps, Dr. Abner, 57. 

Philadelphia, 127, 228. 

Philadelphia, Germantown and 
Norristown railroad, 52. 

Philadelphia and Reading rail- 
road, 54, 56, 239. 

Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, 56, 
118. 

Phosphorescent paint, 230. 

Pilfering from railways, 239-243. 

Pinkerton, Allan, 239. 

Pinkus, 121. 

Piraeus, 90. 

Pittenger, Rev. William, 185 
(note). 

Pittsburgh, 127, exposition of, in 
1883, 77. 

Plate, stolen, 240. 

Plymouth, 7. 

" Popular Science Monthly," 169. 

Portage railroad, 127-129. 

Port Rush, 162. 

Postal-car system, 230-232. 

Proa, the Indian, 32. 

"PufflngBilly," the, 76. - 

Pullman car, lighted by electric- 
ity, 230. 

Pullman Car Company, 194, 195. 

Pullman, George M., 194. 



Rail, manufacture of a, 112, 113. 

Railroad (see Railway). 

Rails, strap or slab, 54r-56; 
grooved, 171; step, 171. 

Railway (see names of special 
railways elsewhere in the in- 
dex), draught-power of, 4; 
functions of, 4 ; early objections 
to the, 15-17, 21-23, 58, 59; 
objections to by the negroes, 
63"; first French, 20, 21; 
manias, 23-30; submarine, 119; 
among the clouds, 141. 

" Railway Age," the, 77 (note). 

"Railway Age" car, the, 193; 
wheels of, 226. 

"Railway Review," 132 (note). 

Railways, miles built in United 
States in 1882, 3; fixtures and 



252 



IISTDEX. 



features of early English roads, 
12; first American, Chapter 
III; on the ice, 115; in the 
tree-tops, 115; elevated — that 
of Colonel Stevens's, 32; Ohio 
Railroad Company's, 115, 116; 
in cities, 174-177; wooden, 116; 
bicycle, 116, 176, 177; toy, 118, 
119; submarine, 119; atmos- 
pheric, 120; marine, 119, 120; 
mountain, Chapter VIII ; grav- 
ity, 35, 125-127; funicular 
counterpoise, 130, 131 ; electric, 
158-169; street, 168-177; cable 
street, 173, 174; and war-hos- 
pitals, 181 ; and ambulances, 
181. 

Rainhill, 17, 18. 

Rebate checks, 238, 239. 

Redruth, in Cornwall, 6. 

Report of Massachusetts Repre- 
sentatives on an early railway 
plan, 176, 177. 

Renter, Baron, 90, 

" Revue des Deux Mondes," the, 
183 (note). 

Rigi (see Vaudois and Arth). 

Rigi-Kulm railway, 130. 

Riggenbach, Herr, 130. 

Riots, railroad, 178. 

Robber on English train, 109. 

Roberts, Solomon W., 129 (note). 

Rochester, 61. 

"Rocket," the, 18. 

Rogers, Grosvenor, and Ketchum, 
62, 65. 

Romilly, 200. 

Rope, the conductor's, 228, 229. 

Royal Gorge, the, 74, 75. 

Ruskin, 3, 16, 

Russell, F. Scott, 199. 

Russia, railways in, 101, 102. 



Sailing car, 39; on the Kansas 

Pacific railroad, 121. 
"Sampson," the, 76. 
Sampson, Low and Company, 

234 (note). 
Sand-fence, 73. 



Sandusky, 62. 

Sanford, Harroun and Warren, 

235. 
San Francisco, cable roads in, 173. 
San Paulo railroad, 95 (note). 
"Sanspareil," the, 18. 
Saratoga, Mt. McGregor and Lake 

George railroad, 165. 
Schenectady, 47, 48, 51, 52. 
"Science," 77 (note), 132, 159. 
"Scientific American," the, 114, 

123, 187. 
Scranton, Pennsylvania, 126. 
"Scribner's Monthly," 143. 
Scudder, Samuel H., 77 (note). 
Seeds, Joseph A. (engineer), 204, 

205, 
Semaphore, the, 220. 
Semmering railway, 134. 
Semples, General, 66. 
Shah, the, 90. 
Sharon, Senator, 191, 192. 
Sheer Ali, 3. 

Sherman, General, and the rail- 
ways, 180, 184. 
Shipton, Mother, 31, 32. 
Signals, 216-218, 229; early night, 

12; candle, 12; automatic, 220 ; 

electric, 229. 
Siemens and Halske, 160, 161. 
Siemens, Messrs., 162, 168. 
Siemens, Professor Werner, 159, 

161. 
Silhouette-artist Brown, 47, 48, 
Sleeping cars, invention of, 193, 

194. 
Slough, 197. 
Smalley, E. V., 73. 
Smith, Sydney, 1. 
Smoking cars, 195. 
" Snake-heads," 56. 
Snow plough on Quincy railroad, 

34. 
Snow ploughs, evidently no, 65; 

in the West, 82, 83. 
Snow-storms, trains lost in, 83- 

87. 
Snow's " Geography of Boston," 

35 (note). 
Soissons, 230. 
South Carolina, 45, 122. 



lifDEX. 



253 



South Carolina Central railroad, 
116-118. 

Southeastern railway, 229. 

Southern Pacific railroad, 69, 72, 
73. 

Spain, travel by rail in, 106, 107. 

Speed, 16, 17, 33, 6o, 196-198. 

"Spitzbergen and Patagonia," 
25. 

Spotters, 238. 

Springfield, Illinois, 64. 

St. G-erraain railway, 20, 21. 

St. Gothard railway, 137, 138. 

St. Petersburg, 197. 

StafE and ticket system, 321. 

Stage-horses, over-driving of, 15, 
51. 

Stage travel, 51. 

Standard time, 87, 89. 

Stations, railway, 214-216. 

"Staym-ingines," 199. 

"Steam caravan " railroad, 116- 
118. 

Steam-whistle, 63. 

Stephenson, George, 8, 10; before 
the Parliament Committee, 17; 
at Rainhill, 17, 18; talk with 
Mrs. Kemble, 19 (note). 

Stephenson, John, 169, 170. 

Stephenson locomotive (in Amer- 
ica), 60. 

Stevens, Colonel John, 33, 33. 

Stevens, Paran, 149. 

Stevens, "William, and his mid- 
night ride, 202, 203. 

Stillman, W. J., 223. 

Stevenson, David, 127. 

Stockton and Darlington railway, 
76. 

Stockton and Stokes, 44. 

Stone, General LeRoy, 118. 

"Stourbridge Lion," the, 36-38. 

"Strap" rails, 54, 56. 

Street railroads, 169-177; electric, 
168; ordinary, 169-174; ele- 
vated, 174r-177; in Paris, 172; 
in England, 172; in various 
countries, 173. 

Studley, Warren, 233 (note). 

Submarine railway, 119. 

Susquehanna, 128. 



Sweden, DuChaillu's account of 
railway restaurant in, 103, 104. 
Swinburne, William, 62. 
Switchback railroad, 136, 127. 



Talbott, E. H., 10, 77 (note), 193. 

Tathams, the, 146. 

Taylor, Benjamin F., 71 (note), 
213. 

Tehacape Pass, 73. 

Telegraph poles, made of iron 
rails, 95 (note). 

Telegraphic car, 122. 

Teleseopical hydraulic elevators, 
153. 

" Tenderfoot," the story about, 79. 

Tender (of locomotive), 63. 

Tennessee campaigns, 181, 182. 

Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis 
railway, 193. 

Tewksbury, Massachusetts, 207. 

Thackeray, 28 (note). 

Thiers, M., 20. 

Thomas, Evan, 3Q. 

Thorp and Sprague, 50. 

Tickets, railway, 333-337. 

Time, standard, 87-89. 

" Times," the London, 4. 

"Times," the New York, 339. 

Tissandier, Gaston, 159. 

Tivoli, 90. 

" Tom Thumb," the, 39-45. 

Tornadoes, 80, 81. 

Train, George Francis, 172, 173. 

Train, New York and Chicago 
Limited, 197; stopping a, by 
mushrooms, 198; despatcher, 
218, 219; stafE and ticket sys- 
tem, 221. 

Train, lost in quicksand, etc., 80; 
lost in snow storms. 83-87. 

Tramways (see Street railroads). 

Trevithiek, Richard, anecdote of 
his road locomotive, 7. 

"Tribune," the New York, 166, 
205. 

Troy and Greenfield railway, 138. 

Truck of American locomotive, 
200. 

Trunk lines, definition of, 68; 



254 



IlfDEX. 



formation of, 69 ; early western, 

69. 
Tufts, Otis, 146, 148-151. 
Tunnel, the first railroad tunnel 

in America, 128; the St. Goth- 

ard, 137. 
Turk, the imperturbable old, 99. 
Tussaud, Madame, 190. 
Two-wheeled locomotive, 118. 

U 

Uetliberg railroad, 131. 

Underground railways of Lon- 
don, etc., 111-113. 

Union Pacific railroad, 70-72, 78, 
81, 83. 



Vanderbilt, President W. H., car 

of, 192. 
Vaudois Rigi railroad, 130, 131. 
Velocipedes, railway, 118. 
Ventilation of cars, 243 (note). 
Verviers, 215. 
Vesuvius, Mt., railway of, 132, 

133. 
Viaducts, railroad, 174, 175. 
"Victory," the car, 54. 
Victoria, Queen, travelling of, 

191. 
Vitznau, 130. 
Von Moltke, General, 183. 

Wabash railroad, 64-66. 
Wagner, Webster, 194. 
Wales, Prince of, 149. 
Wales, South, 198. 



Washburn, William, 149. 

Waterloo, 181. 

Waterman, Henry, 146. 

Waterspoiits, 80. 

Wellington, Duke of, 18,19. 

Weller, Tony, 2. 

Wells, Henry, 233 (note). 

West Point Foundry, 36, 45. 

" West Point," the, 46, 47. 

Western railroad, ceremonies at- 
tending the opening of, 61. 

Westinghouse brakes, 193, 227, 
228. 

Wheel, manufacture of a, 225, 
226. 

Whitehead, Joseph, 77. 

Whitman, Walt, 3, 74. 

Whittier, Charles, 146 (note). 

Wilkins, Bishop, 121. 

Williams, Captain C. W., 122. 

Winans, Ross, 83. 

Winslow, J. B., 10. 

Woman and electricity, 158. 

Women in railway speculation, 
25-28. 

Wooden railways, 116. 

Woodruff, inventor of sleeping 
car, 193, 194. 

Worcester, 59, 60. 

Wordsworth, the poet, 16. 

Wurtz, William and^ Maurice, 
125. 



Yarns, curious railway (in the 
West), 205. 



Zanckerode electric railway, 161. 



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pathos. His sentences glisten like gems in the sunlight." — Jom-nal, Albany. 



8 PUBLICATIONS OF S. C. GRIGGS &= CO., CHICAGO. 

Welsh — The Development of English Literature and Lan- 
guage. By Prof. A. H. Welsh. 2 vols., iioo pages. Crown 
octavo, cloth, $5; half calf, $8; full turkey morocco, gilt edges, $12. 

"A really great work." — Press^ Philadelphia. 

"As complete in its survey as it is attractive in style and manner." — Critic. 

" The plan is excellent and the execution felicitous." — Edwin P. Whipple. 

" The volumes, considered merely as a work of reference, must enter the 
library of every student of literature." — Edmund Clarence Stedman. 

" The best work for the general reader that has yet been published, and we 
unreservedly recommend it to the student as well, for its learning, very per- 
fect treatment and its style. . . . The criticisms of American authors will be 
found to be analytical, exhaustive and terse, and to be the finest examples of 
such work. The articles on Hawthorne and Emerson, which are complete, 
have never been equalled." — Globe, Boston. 

Wheeler — The Foreigner in China. By L. N. Wheeler, 
D.D. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

" The fruits of his observations embrace much heretofore unknown to the 
general public, and readers will find the book exceptionally interesting." — 
Transcript, Boston. 

Winchell — Preadamites; or, A Demonstration of the Ex- 
istence of Men before Adam. Together with a Study of 
their Condition, Antiquities, Racial Affinities, and Progressive 
Dispersion over the Earth. With Charts and Illustrations. By 
Alexander Winchell, LL.D., Prof, of Geology and Palaeon- 
tology in the University of Michigan; Author of "Sketches of 
Creation," etc. 8vo, cloth, $3.50. 

"A remarkable and powerful contribution to the reconciliation of the Bible 
and modern science." — Literary World, Boston. 

" The work is popular in its best sense — attractive in style, clear in exposi- 
tion, and eminently instructive. ... It is not too much to say that it settles 
the controversy." — Popular Science Monthly. 

Winchell — Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer. By Alex. 
Winchell, LL.D. Illustrated. i2mo, cloth, $2. 

" This superb work is of thrilling interest to every reader who has an intel- 
ligent desire to know more of this wonderful planet on which we live. . . . 
The chapter, 'A Grasp of Geologic Time,' is worth more to the general 
reader than the price of the whole book. . . . The plan of this book is most 
admirable. Prof. Winchell's first chapter takes the reader upon an interest- 
ing excursion to Mont Blanc and the Mer de Glace, where the aesthetic aspect 
of geology, as there so beautifully displayed, is presented. This is followed 
by three chapters on ' The Old Age of the Continents,' ' Obliterated Conti- 
nents,' and 'A Grasp of Geologic Time'; following with other chapters, Cli- 
matic, Historical and Philosophical. It is a treasure which should find a 
cherished place in every family library." — Hojne Journal, Boston. 

^■)^Any of these books will be sent by mail, post-paid, 07i receipt of the 
price, by the publishers. 



